Settling into a Routine

This post is #46 in a year-long series ... Through this series of posts I plan to share our family's experiences during our 17-year-old daughter's year-long battle with brain cancer, which began in February of 2008. My desire is to process through the events of that year from the perspective that a decade of time has brought ... for myself, really. But if you'd like to follow along, you're welcome to join me.

March 31, 2008

By this time, we had settled into a pretty comfortable routine of traveling to Little Rock every day for Hannah's radiation treatments.  Ten years ago this week was spring break, and our schedule was as follows:

Monday 3/24/08 - 11:00 appointment at the Hem/Onc clinic at Children's Hospital
                                3:20 radiation treatment at CARTI

Tuesday 3/25/08 - 1:40 radiation treatement

Wednesday 3/26/08  - 1:40 radiation treatment

Thursday 3/27/08 - 9:10 radiation treatment

Friday 3/28/08 - 10:40 radiation treatment

(Yes, I still have my calendar from that year.  Not because of what was going on that year, but because I keep my calendars from every year.  Don't judge. :)  )

Because it was spring break week, Bethany was able to accompany us to several of these appointments, which was a treat for both girls ... and for me.  We tried to have as much fun together as possible on these trips.  However, Bethany was still dealing with ongoing health issues of her own, as you can see from the email I sent out on March 31st ...

There haven’t been many updates lately, because, thankfully, there has been little to report. We saw Hannah’s oncologist again today, as we do every Monday, and he is really pleased with how well she is doing. Every Monday they will be taking blood, to make sure that her blood counts stay up while she is undergoing radiation and chemotherapy. Please pray that her blood counts will remain where they should be, because if they drop, we may have to stop the treatments for awhile in order to let her counts build back up before resuming. We would sure like to get these treatments behind us as soon as we can. Hannah continues to have some queasiness and even occasional dizziness, but so far nothing too bad as far as side effects from the treatments.

Bethany is still struggling with low grade fever, abdominal discomfort, and fatigue. She is having some new irritation in her eyes, possibly a recurrence of pink eye. Our primary care physician in Hot Springs has referred us to Arkansas Children’s Hospital, and we have an appointment there at 9:30 tomorrow morning. Please pray that we can get to the bottom of whatever is making her feel so rotten. I will send out an update if we find out anything for certain tomorrow.

Thank you again for all of your prayers, encouragement, and support. We continue to receive daily reminders (cards, emails, gifts, phone calls, etc.) of God’s love through all of you. It means more to us than we can say.

God is good, all the time!
Jill and Brad Sullivan