{"id":149,"date":"2008-06-03T02:19:24","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T08:19:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phil801.com\/wpblog\/2008\/06\/03\/living-with-leukemia-serenitys-first-oncology-clinic-visit\/"},"modified":"2008-06-03T02:19:24","modified_gmt":"2008-06-03T08:19:24","slug":"living-with-leukemia-serenitys-first-oncology-clinic-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/2008\/06\/03\/living-with-leukemia-serenitys-first-oncology-clinic-visit\/","title":{"rendered":"Living with Leukemia: Serenity\u2019s first Oncology Clinic visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is Day\u00a011 of my baby, Serenity, being diagnosed with and treated for Leukemia.\u00a0 Day 9 is here.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

I HATE Cancer.\u00a0 I cannot stand what it’s doing to my baby, it rips me up inside every time she is affected by it.\u00a0 Today was one of the worst, second only to dropping her off for surgery on Sunday.\u00a0 I think any Father can understand (but hopefully hasn’t had to experience)\u00a0the feeling of helplessness, frustration, anger and impotence of watching your child suffer and being completely unable to do a single thing about it.\u00a0 A father is supposed to be able to keep his children safe from harm, he is the protector and the provider.\u00a0 Cancer completely robs\u00a0a father of those abilities.\u00a0 How does a father spurn an invisible, untouchable and deadly enemy?\u00a0 It forces you to do things and allow things to be done to your child that you would never do in real life.\u00a0 Seriously, what father would hold down his baby, force liquid into her mouth that he knows will probably make her puke instantly – and when she does puke, as soon as she is settled, you force the same thing again – yet in the last week I’ve done it dozens of times to her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Today I watched and held Serenity still as they gave her drugs to put her to sleep so they could shove needles into her back to inject poison and her hip to extract bone marrow.\u00a0 I’ve seen people stoned many times before – once she was clearly stoned out of her mind it didn’t really bother me.\u00a0 Then they gave her drugs to put her to sleep, she was sitting up, leaning against me and it was simply as if she had taken a nap.\u00a0 Then I laid her down – and that was the bad.\u00a0 It wasn’t like she was asleep – it was like she was dead.\u00a0 Her eyes were wide open, she was quite stiff, and it totally reminded me of the only time I’ve held a dead person.\u00a0 It completely freaked me out – I had just stood by and helped as they apparently killed my baby.\u00a0 I knew intuitively that she was fine, that it was a simple procedure that the doctors and nurses had done many, many times.\u00a0 But mentally I had just watched my baby die, it took me a bit to get past it.\u00a0 I didn’t, couldn’t mention it to Adria, she was a little freaked out by it too.\u00a0 I hate that Cancer made me allow, even assist, in making that happen.<\/p>\n

Of course, she was fine but the point remains: I hate Cancer and what it makes a Father do and allow.<\/p>\n

On an easier note, we had Serenity’s hair cut today.\u00a0 Her long hair was beautiful but it got in the way every time she threw up.\u00a0 It was hot and frequently sweaty and is going to fall out very soon anyway.\u00a0 So today she got a bob.\u00a0 It’s different but quite cute!\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"serenityatclinic.jpg\"<\/p>\n

And on a happy note, after she had her intravenous chemo treatment, her bone marrow aspiration, her lumbar puncture along with her spinal chemo tretment, and new platelets – she had her port de-accessed.\u00a0 That means she had the dressing, tubing and needle removed from her port – now her chest is clear and the only unusual thing about it is a bump in her chest above her heart.\u00a0 She is SO happy and proud of that!\u00a0<\/p>\n

The other cool thing she got today was her “Courage Necklace” which is a cool thing that the\u00a0Child Life\u00a0people at the hospital do for the kids.\u00a0 They get a necklace with beads on it that spell out their name and they get a particular bead for different things they’ve done for their treatment.\u00a0 There’s one for an ambulance ride, one for chemo, one for surgery, one for getting a port and about 30 other things.\u00a0 Today Serenity got about 15 beads (too bad they don’t have one for puking, she’d have about 70 of them)- she’s been through a lot!\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’m SO glad that our baby is still with us, I’ll have to watch all the events I’ve described here happen repeatedly over the next 2 1\/2 years until she is cured – and I’ll do it gladly.\u00a0 But I still HATE Cancer.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is Day\u00a011 of my baby, Serenity, being diagnosed with and treated for Leukemia.\u00a0 Day 9 is here.\u00a0
\nI HATE Cancer.\u00a0 I cannot stand what it’s doing to my baby, it rips me up inside every time she is affected by it.\u00a0 Today was one of the worst, second only to dropping her off for surgery […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.liftingupserenity.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}