Since I was still a little radioactive when I came home from MIBG I had to use my own bathroom and my own sink. I wasn’t able to go to school for a couple weeks either and I was sad about that because we were hatching chickens in 4th grade. Momma said since a lot of things about my life weren’t fair we could get our own baby chickens. I had a lot of fun with them but I didn’t hold them for too long so they wouldn’t get sick.
About a month after MIBG we had to do a scan to see if it worked at all. You could do MIBG 3 times and so we needed to plan when to do it again. I was worried about when they would want to do it again because the last day of 4th grade was an overnight field trip at the zoo. I had been wanting to do it since I heard about it in kindergarten. I wasn’t having any pain so we figured it worked in my hip. When momma came in after talking to the doctor she was crying so hard she could hardly talk. I was thinking she was gonna say something bad but then she started smiling and she said the cancer was all gone! I had zero cancer anywhere and the doctors couldn’t believe it. Momma said that the doctor was crying a little too because it was just so crazy. I was so excited to not have cancer and to get to go on my field trip with all the other kids.
The zoo field trip was so much fun and so was the rest of the summer. Momma said I needed to start taking a medicine at home to keep the cancer away but the doctors couldn’t figure out how to get it for us because of insurance stuff. I didn’t really care because I was just having fun being home and not having pain. We went swimming a lot and went hiking and to the lake. Addie got to go to cancer camp with me again and that was my favorite part of summer. A little bit after cancer camp I also got to go to a horse camp for the week. That kinda camp was different because I only went during the day but came to my house to sleep. I had never got to ride horses that much so no one thought it was weird when my legs and back started hurting. By the end of the week even my head was hurting but momma said that was probably just from the helmet I was wearing. The more things started to hurt the more I started to worry.
The day after riding camp the pain was getting pretty bad and I was crying a lot. We had pain medicine at home that worked now so that was good but I had to have it all the time or else the pain would be too bad. A couple days later momma took me to our hospital in Cincinnati. They got me a pain pump again and put me in the hospital. Momma said we had to have hope but I knew. I could just tell by the way it was hurting in my body. When the scans came back saying cancer was everywhere again I wasn’t surprised. But this time it was more places, even in my skull. And that scared me.
izzystory 