Hannah's Little Red Laptop

This post is #164 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.

January 20, 2009

At some point during that year, I began to carry Hannah's red laptop with me on every trip to Children's Hospital.  This laptop had been a surprise birthday gift for her back in October ... made even more special because all of our extended family contributed toward its purchase.  Unfortunately, she had only a brief window of time that she was able to use it herself due to her vision issues.

At her appointments, there was always a lot of sitting around and waiting ... waiting for bloodwork to be done, waiting for platelets, waiting for chemo infusions ... and I wrote my emails on this little red laptop while sitting beside Hannah's bed as she often dozed through these procedures.

I also used it to play Solitaire once my email was written for the day.  Not any of those fancy versions of Solitaire ... just plain old traditional Solitaire.  There was something mind-numbing about playing game after game, interspersed with the occasional reward of cards bouncing across the screen in victory.  If Brad was there with us, he and I would pass the laptop back and forth, taking turns playing; competing against each other for who could get the best score.  That silly game provided a much-needed escape from reality at times.

After Hannah went to Heaven I used that laptop for blogging and replying to emails, and it was also instrumental in the early years of the While We're Waiting ministry.  If you look carefully at the picture above, you'll see that many of the letters on the keyboard were actually worn completely off by the time I retired it a few years ago.  It may be retired, but it will always have a special place in our home.

My email from ten years ago today (typed on that red laptop) ...

We are still at Children's Hospital this afternoon...Hannah has had both of her IV chemo drugs, and she will be receiving a unit of platelets soon. After that, we'll be ready to go home. We will come back on Friday for bloodwork and possibly more platelets. The chemo makes her feel kind of crummy, but thankfully, it has not made her sick. The doctor tells us that we will probably do one more round of chemo in two weeks, and then have an MRI to check our progress.

God is good, all the time!

Jill and Brad