One Less Flower

This post is #74 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.

May 9, 2008

The debut of the Magnet Cove High School Choir's performance of Alice in Wonderland was scheduled for this evening ten years ago.  Hannah had missed a lot of the practices due to our numerous trips to Little Rock for radiation treatments and doctor's appointments, but had a small role as a flower.  She had always enjoyed theater and drama, performing in several plays when she was younger, and she had been looking forward to this performance.

But shortly after her last visit to the Hem/Onc clinic, when everything was looking so bright and sunny, she inexplicably began to struggle with fatigue again.  She became pale and listless, and didn't want to attend school.  That's how we knew she was really feeling bad!  The day before the Alice in Wonderland performance, she asked me to call her choir director and let her know that she would not be there to play her role.  Thankfully, they could get by with one less flower.

We were concerned, of course, but not overly so.  We knew she had been through a lot over the last couple of months and had really been pushing herself hard to stay involved in everything.  It seemed that she had finally reached her limit and was just worn out.  I was fine with her staying home from school and just resting for a change.  After all, the Carrie Underwood concert was coming up that Sunday and I wanted her to be well rested so she could fully enjoy that!  We three girls were so looking forward to that celebration of the completion of her first round of treatments.