Just Another Step Toward a Cure

This post is #91 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.

Mid-July 2008

Hannah was amazingly patient with the various aspects of her regularly-scheduled appointments at Children's Hospital.  She didn't love being repeatedly poked as the nurses searched for a "good" vein, but she never complained.  Nor did she enjoy having her blood pressure taken ... in fact, it was quite often high because of the stress related to the blood draw ... but she patiently put up with it, even when it had to be taken more than once to get a reading within the acceptable range.  She smiled her way through all the routine questions she was asked at every appointment.

But she hated the antibiotic breathing treatment she had to endure every month.  This was no inhaler or nebulizer-type breathing treatment.  Hannah had to sit in a hospital bed or on a chair, be zipped into a plastic tent, and breathe in some sort of foul-smelling (and apparently foul-tasting) medication for about thirty minutes.  The tent was transparent, so we could see each other when she was in there, and we could talk to one another if we raised our voices a bit.

I'm not really sure why she hated that treatment so much, but I have a suspicion.  It was obviously unpleasant, but so was most of what she went through during that year.  The purpose of the procedure was to prevent a certain type of pneumonia to which she was susceptible due to her chemotherapy regimen ... and I know she thought that was silly.  She never believed she would get pneumonia.

I suspect that what really bothered her was how isolated she felt sitting in that tent.  For those thirty minutes each month, she could do nothing but sit inside that tent, breathe, and think.  While sitting surrounded by plastic, I believe she keenly felt the separation that existed between herself and the rest of the people in her world.  The isolation of being a teenager with brain cancer became a little more real.

Finally the tent would be unzipped and she would be freed from her temporary prison.  She would sputter around for a few minutes to clear the remnants of yuckiness from her nose and mouth, and then her good humor would return.  Another month's breathing treatment down.  Just another step in the process of accomplishing our goal ... a cure for Hannah's glioblastoma.