Summer/Fall 2015

The first round of chemo I had over the summer made me real sick. At home I didn’t have any energy to get up off the couch and I was throwing up a lot. Throwing up didn’t hurt so bad as it used to because I didn’t have sores in my throat anymore. So I didn’t really think it was that big of deal. But since I couldn’t eat or drink much without throwing it back up they put me back in the hospital and start feeding me through my blood again.

Momma and daddy talked and decided they didn’t want me to have to keep doing a chemo that made me so sick. They said I had already spent a lot of time in the hospital and they wanted me to be able to be home more and do more stuff that other kids do. That’s when everything got real confusing. To stop the chemo we had to do scans again. But the scans showed I didn’t really have cancer anymore. Everyone was crying but momma said they were crying good tears. She said there was still a spot there but that it wasn’t cancer and now we were just going to be able to do a chemo at home that wouldn’t make me so sick. I didn’t really understand how cancer could just show up and how cancer could just go away. And I didn’t really understand why people cried when it did either.

I was excited to not be so sick anymore and I was excited to get to go home. That summer me and Carter got to have a lot of fun. We got to do stuff like swimming and go to fair and go to Kings Island. I still did a chemo at home, even though I didn’t think you needed chemo if you didn’t have cancer, but momma said it was to keep the cancer from coming back. I had to have labs done every week but that wasn’t bad. The nurse would come to our house and access my port. Having my port accessed was not fun. Momma would put cream on it before the nurse would come and that made my skin not be able to feel the needle. The thing was, the needle went in real deep and sometimes they had to dig around with it. I would usually cry about that. I tried not to cry about a needle now that I was seven but sometimes it just hurt too bad and I couldn’t help it. But what I found out was that if you pinched yourself while they put the needle in then it didn’t hurt so bad. So I started pinching myself every time they accessed my port. I’d still get tears in my eyes but if I pushed harder I could make them go away. I figured I would rather feel pain that I was causing myself instead of pain that someone else was causing me.

I got to go to second grade when school started and I was real excited. Since they had first told me about the cancer this time I didn’t know how much of school I would be able to go to. But since it sorta went a way I got to go a lot and that was more fun than going to the hospital or throwing up on the couch. Except for the chemo and the port and the no hair I kinda felt like just a regular kid.