I was still in the hospital a couple days later when the pictures finally showed the cancer. It was in my bones. All of them. My legs and my back and my arms and my hips. The cancer was everywhere and it was the worst in my one hip where the pain was. They had figured out a pain medicine that worked and our doctor said there was a new kind of treatment we had never tried before.
The thing was, my cancer had never been this many places before. There was usually just a little bit of cancer in a little bit of places. But this time was different. This time there was a lot of cancer in a lot of places. When the doctors would come in there was something different now. It was different in the way they talked and sometimes even just in the way they were quiet. We were supposed to go to Florida on Spring Break in a couple days and Dr. Weiss said we should probably still do that. He said we would try the treatment the week we came back. Something seemed different even in the way he wanted us to go to Florida.
We took all the pain medicines with us and some nice people we didn’t know bought us plane tickets so we didn’t have to drive. Momma and daddy didn’t think I would be able to sit in a car for that long. That trip we just mostly went to the beach so if my leg started hurting I could go back up to our room and lay down for a while. Dolphins were my favorite thing and we got to see the one from my favorite movie, ‘Winter.’ We even got to jet ski and a bunch of dolphins found us and they followed us around forever. When we stopped they came right up to us and there was two babies with them. I was smiling but momma couldn’t stop crying. She said those dolphins were there for me, that they could sense something in my soul. I didn’t know about that but I said she should leave a good online review for the jet ski place.
One day we went to Universal so Carter could see the Harry Potter stuff. We had to get a wheel chair for me and it was starting to get hard for me to walk again even with the pain medicine. That night I got into momma’s bed because my leg was hurting so bad. We both just cried a lot. I wasn’t ready to leave the beach but I was ready to fix my leg.
Momma told me that night that it wasn’t really fair, but I was learning about making grownup choices. She said sometimes grownups have to choose between something they kinda didn’t want to do – like go back into the hospital – and something they really didn’t want to do – like have my leg hurt. I told her I didn’t think grownup choices were fair and I said I really didn’t think it was fair for kids to have to make them.
izzystory 