My nience was diagnosed with it Friday. She is nine, her mother, my sister, 49. My younger sister and I were at my clinic working when my older sister called. My niece had been looking pale, was lethargic, had bleeding from her gums, lips. Bruising over her body. This is making me sick to write this, Just imagine a moment for the girl. My older sister called at 12:50. I had a session at 1:00. My younger sister and a college girl work the front desk. I came out of session and walked in to see my sister's face as she was 30 seconds into the phone call with my older sister. Her face dropped, I didn't understand the specifics, but anyone can understand an emergency.
Within five minutes, you'd have thought it a well practiced fire drill, and maybe on some level it has been my little sister and I were off in our specific directions. Or maybe that's a thought just driven by the knowlege that the three of us have no one else in this world to trust.
My little sister looks like Suzanne Summer, gorgeous, charismatic, loves all the fluff and stuff. I can only compare myself to Amy Winehouse, love her or hate her. What I know is she lived and died alone. My older sister is the definition of perserverance, a very hidden Kate Hepburn. My niece's father, whom my sister is married to and lives with, has not spent a moment in the hospital with his daughter, not returned one message from her mother to him. My pain this early morning is really driving me insane.
There were two things that needed taking care of 12:50 Friday. My older sister and my nience needed to Children's Hospital for admittance, and my older sister's two sons needed to be cared for.
My older sister's husband is a raging alcoholic. I'm not being dramatic here. He is in the latter stages, cannot function without a constant infusion, does not remember anything anymore. Yes, we've been doing everything possible to convince her for the last twenty five years to leave him. Not the point here.
So I arrive at my sister's house because she cannot drive, she and her daughter just arrived home from the clinic doctor, who gave this diagnosis. We get to Children's Speciality Clinics, my husband's brother is a pediatric specialist there, it was so awful. I don't know how much more I can write, it is so raw. She will live, it is assured. She has the best type, A.L.L. type B. No leukimia cells in her spinal fluid, my god how one's lexicon changes overnight.
My husband and I have spent the entire weeiend seeing my niece deal with cancer, being there with my sister and her, in constant communication with my little sister who was caring for her kids and my older sister's two other children. This was a weekend my sons were with their father, they do not know anything of this yet. I have to tell them my next day with them, how do you do that. The treatment goes for two and a half years, she will keep her life. She has the best prognosis possible. She will lose her long hair, she will grow a puffy face from steriods, she will undergo behavioral changes, she will periodically spend time in the hospital, she will be on chemo, beginning last night, heart fucking wrenching to see a little girl so afraid of the chemicals going into the port surgecially implanted into her this morning. She's so afraid of needles within 36 hours of this happening. Her organs are enlarged, she is in the best care but at high risk, how do you tell a dauther, a mother that. My mother has arrived tonight from the south where she and my dad winter.
Her father is hopefully dead of alcohol poisoning. That wretch. My heart is breaking, breaking. I found myself cleaning my shower with the intent of making it as clean and sterile as if it were an operating table at 300am this morning, thinking of her. I am using every molecule of myself to wish her well. Seeing a sick child look out from behind her eyes, an extremely intelligent one, understanding all that is going on around her, is fucking heartbreaking.
There is always so much more.
That shower is cleaner than any in America, I can assure you. My wishes and my intent are with that her and my sister.