Six Months to Live

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Dawn wished Jake had kissed her. Now that she had cancer, he probably never would. The chemotherapy would make her ugly and sick. Probably no one would ever want to kiss her as long as she lived!

  CHAPTER

  4

  The war against Dawn’s cancer intensified. She took drugs by mouth and drugs by IVs. She half-suspected there were drugs in her food, whenever she could get food to stay down! The doctors and nurses were very kind. Her parents, friends, teachers and people from her church were also very kind and thoughtful. But it was Sandy, her good and constant friend and fellow victim, who made the difference in Dawn’s state of mind.

  Without Sandy, Dawn was sure she’d never survive. They shared their hurts, their fears and their hopes. Within a few weeks they became the best of friends, linked by the bond of their illness and their fierce determination to beat leukemia.

  The first time Dawn met Sandy’s parents, she felt overwhelmed. Mr. Chandler was a mountain of a man. He stood over six and a half feet tall. His legs reminded her of tree trunks. Mrs. Chandler was a tiny, petite woman who had a soft, pretty complexion and white-blonde hair like Sandy’s.

  “How’s my darlin’?” Mr. Chandler’s voice boomed from the doorway of their hospital room. Sandy squealed with delight and flung her arms open to him.

  “Sandy’s told me about you,” he told Dawn, who openly stared at him. “My, my, you’re hardly bigger than a June bug,” he said, his accent causing her to smile shyly.

  He eyed both of the girls critically. “They feedin’ you girls proper? Neither of you look like you’ve had a decent meal in a month of Sundays.”

  “We’re eatin’ fine, Daddy,” Sandy told him. “It’s just that some of the drugs kind of make us sick.”

  His lips pressed together. Dawn got the feeling that under his cheerful words and broad smile, Mr. Chandler was very angry about Sandy being so sick.

  “That’s right,” Dawn added. “They have a special kitchen on this floor with a microwave and refrigerator and everything. Why, we can get pizza at midnight if we want it!”

  “Pizza at midnight.” Mr. Chandler made a face. “Doesn’t sound too appetizin’ to me.”

  “You do look a mite thin, sugar,” Mrs. Chandler added. She patted her daughter’s thin hand and smoothed Sandy’s hair off her forehead.

  “Now, Mama,” Sandy said. “Don’t you fret. They’re takin’ real good care of me.”

  But once the weekend was over and her parents had returned to West Virginia, Sandy confided, “My bein’ sick is really hard on my Pa. He almost didn’t send me to this hospital.”

  Dawn looked at her with surprise. “No kidding?” she asked.

  “No kidding,” she restated. “He was looking into those cancer clinics in Europe and Mexico. But Mama persuaded him to see Dr. Sinclair first.” Sandy giggled. “My mama looks small and frail, but she’s as stubborn as a mule when she sets her mind to somethin’.”

  Dawn giggled, too. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. Who’d I have for a friend if you weren’t?” she asked.

  Sandy’s face grew serious. “When we both leave here, let’s write each other. Okay?”

  Dawn agreed and felt relieved. Leaving the hospital had been on her mind, too. Sandy had become the best friend she’d ever known. And it was difficult to imagine not being around her every day. Dawn was glad they were going to keep in touch. She was glad they’d be able to write one another.

  “Maybe we can even get together next summer for a visit,” Dawn offered eagerly.

  “That’d be real nice,” Sandy drawled. “That is, if we’re both around next summer,” she added softly.

  * * * * *

  Dawn had allowed a few tears to spill the first time Rob came to visit. “Hi, Squirt,” he said. And she slipped her arms around his waist and buried her face in his broad chest.

  “How’s college?” she asked, sniffing back her emotions at seeing him again.

  “I’m knocking them dead,” he said with a smile. “I have several girl friends,” he added.

  Dawn gasped. “But what about you and Debbie?” she asked. Dawn remembered how Debbie and Rob had dated all through high school. She secretly thought that her brother might marry Debbie someday.

  “That was high school,” Rob said. “College is different. There is so much going on that I can’t be tied down to just one girl.”

  The idea amazed Dawn. She’d never even had a date and Rob was already dating lots of different girls. She wondered about herself. Would she still be able to date, have fun and go to college like Rob? She knew the leukemia hung over her future like a dark cloud.

  That same day, Dr. Sinclair held a special meeting with her family. They listened as the big, blond doctor explained about the bone marrow transplant course of treatment.

  “As you know,” Dr. Sinclair began once Dawn’s family had settled around her bed, “the bone marrow is where new blood cells are formed. Sometimes, despite all the chemotherapy, we can’t keep a patient in remission. At that point we consider a bone marrow transplant.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dawn told him.

  “We take the marrow from a healthy donor and place it into your bones,” he explained. “Hopefully, the new marrow begins functioning and making new blood cells.”

  “Why can’t we do it now?” Dawn asked.

  Dr. Sinclair smiled and shook his head. “It’s not that simple. It’s a whole different type of treatment that we only do when conventional treatment doesn’t work. Also,” he said, “we have to have a donor from the patient’s family, preferably a sibling. So, while you’re all here, we’d like to do some blood tests. How about it?” He looked from Mr. and Mrs. Rochelle to Rob. All agreed enthusiastically.

  “You’d give me your bone marrow?” Dawn asked Rob shyly once they were alone.

  “Absolutely!” Rob said, chucking her on her chin. “I gave you the chicken pox, didn’t I? I can spare bone marrow for you, too.”

  “Thanks,” was all she could whisper. She felt deep gratitude for the love he was showing her. Rob . . . so big and strong . . . and healthy.

  * * * * *

  The days in the hospital stretched into weeks. Time became fluid, flowing around tests, treatments, meals, T.V. and time in the activity room. Dawn quickly discovered that the Oncology floor was full of kids.

  There were little kids who shrieked and cried, big kids who tried to hide from the nurses, and kids like her and Sandy. There was one girl of 16, who left after Dawn had been there two weeks, and a boy of 15, who had also gone home after a few weeks of treatment.

  “It’s different for everyone,” Nurse Fredia explained while she made up Dawn’s bed one morning. “Some kids come in here, go into remission after the first round of drugs, go home and never return. Some come in, go through many rounds of treatment and relapse in six months. There’s no predicting how the disease will affect any one person.”

  Dawn practiced her Imaging therapy regularly, focusing on mental pictures of her teddy bear army destroying entire armies of ugly green globs. She pictured Mr. Ruggers leading bear brigades through her veins and arteries and blasting every green glob that got in his path. The technique was most helpful when the chemotherapy made her very sick. “The drugs are my friends!” she told herself over and over.

  She and Sandy went to the activity room every day. It was well equipped with games, toys, projects and even video game machines. These helped break up the monotony of the long days. The play therapist, Joan Clarke, was always coming up with things to keep the patients busy.

  One time she organized a Popcorn Party. The kids on the Oncology floor popped gallons of corn and then used what they didn’t eat in art projects. Dawn drew a teddy bear on poster board and glued hundreds of kernels of fluffy popcorn to him.

  “He looks like he has a bad case of acne,” Sandy mused.

  “I thought it looked more like dandruff,” Dawn giggled, holding the stiff board at arm’s length.

  “Now thi
s is a work of art,” Sandy said, displaying her own creation. She’d strung individual kernels of popcorn onto a string and sprinkled the entire necklace with sparkling glitter. Every time she turned the string of popcorn around, it caught the reflection from the overhead lights and shimmered.

  “Not bad,” Dawn admitted grudgingly. Then she burst out laughing. “When Jason takes you to a movie, wear that and he won’t have to spend his money on popcorn. Think of what a cheap date you’d be!”

  Sandy joined in, laughing, then said, “Here, Jason, won’t you have a nibble off my neck?”

  They collapsed into helpless peals of laughter, until everyone else in the activity room started giggling along with them. Soon, someone tossed a kernel across the room, bouncing it off someone else’s head. The “victim” retaliated. In a matter of minutes, the entire room erupted into a melee of flying popcorn.

  Kids screeched and roared. Their laughter resounded in the halls as fistfuls of light, fluffy popcorn sailed through the room. Dawn quickly fashioned a popcorn bomb by clumping a ball together in her hands with glue. Then she flung it wildly at an opponent. The gooey mess came apart in the air and landed with a sticky splat on a boy’s bald head.

  He wiped it off and swore revenge. Dawn squealed and dived under a table. He scrambled under it, too, armed with a handful of popcorn that he managed to stuff down the back of her robe. “I give up!” she cried, helpless with laughter. “I give up!”

  A blast from a whistle caused the commotion to stop in mid-stream. Nurse Fredia and four other nurses stood in the doorway, their eyes wide with amazement.

  “What happened?” Nurse Fredia gasped, holding a whistle in her hand. Guiltily, everybody looked at each other.

  The nurse tried to look harsh, but everyone could see the laugh lines starting at the corners of her mouth. The other nurses buried their mouths in the palms of their hands to keep from breaking out into open laughter.

  “You’re not mad?” Jimmy Porter, a ten-year-old, asked.

  “Tell you what,” Nurse Fredia said to the room of hard-breathing kids. “I’m going to shut this door for twenty minutes. When I return, I expect the Good Fairies to have arrived and completely put this room back in order. Is it a deal?”

  Everybody nodded and murmured, “Yes, ma’am.”

  She left. The cleanup was accomplished in ten minutes. Dawn remembered the day for a long time to come. She remembered it not only because of the fun she’d had at the popcorn party, but because that very night a long clump of her beautiful auburn hair fell out in her hand.

  CHAPTER

  5

  The next morning, another hunk of her hair lay against the clean white pillowcase. “Oh, no!” Dawn wailed. “It’s starting! I’m really going bald!”

  Sandy patted Dawn’s arm and confided. “Mine’s fallin’ out too. I-I didn’t want to say anythin’, but look.” The pretty blonde-haired girl dipped her head and Dawn saw a sparse area at her crown.

  Dawn fought down her panic and despair and swallowed hard. “I guess it’s going to happen to both of us,” she said.

  “Guess so,” Sandy confirmed.

  It was bad for Dawn. But it wasn’t nearly so bad now that Sandy was going through it with her. “Misery loves company,” her grandmother had always said. Dawn understood what she meant.

  “I guess I won’t be needin’ these anymore,” Sandy said, opening the drawer next to her bed and pulling out a small cardboard box.

  Dawn lifted the lid and saw Sandy’s entire collection of hair combs, barrettes and hair ribbons. Sandy owned combs in almost every color imaginable – blue, green, red, purple, yellow – beautiful colors that coordinated with all her clothes. Now the combs would be useless. Dawn felt bitterness welling up in her. How cruel it was to go bald at 13! How awful it was to be sick all the time from the effects of the chemotherapy! How terrible it was to be tired and depressed, have sores in your mouth, bruises all over your body and to be so thin you could count your own ribs!

  “It isn’t fair!” she said aloud. “It just isn’t fair!”

  “It’s just hair,” Sandy said with a shrug and stuffed the box back into the drawer. “Everyone says it’ll grow back.”

  “I’m calling Mom,” Dawn said. “Maybe she can think of something.”

  Meggie Rochelle did think of something. She arrived that very afternoon with Mrs. Cooper. The heavy-set woman with the pleasant face and ready smile was a member of Dawn’s church and owned her own beauty salon. She arrived with two small duffle bags. One was filled with hair grooming equipment. The other was stuffed with wigs.

  “Now, let’s see what Dorothy Cooper can do about this ‘problem’ you’re having,” the woman said.

  She went to work on Dawn first. Mrs. Cooper dragged a comb lightly through Dawn’s once-thick auburn hair. Large clumps landed on the floor with a gentle plip-plop sound. Dawn winced. But Mrs. Cooper worked quickly. She snipped, cut and shaped the remaining hair into a very short bob.

  “This will help some,” she told Dawn. “At least it will be less noticeable for a while.”

  Dawn surveyed herself in the mirror. “I look like Mr. T,” she lamented.

  Sandy giggled. “My turn!” she cried, eagerly taking Dawn’s place in the chair.

  Mrs. Cooper went to work immediately on Sandy. Within 20 minutes she had pruned Sandy’s long, silky white-blonde hair into soft layers. “Yours isn’t as thick as Dawn’s,” Mrs. Cooper said. “So it’ll look thinner a lot sooner.”

  Sandy tipped her head at her mirror reflection and nodded her approval. “I kind of like it,” she mused. “I’ve always had such pitifully thin hair. It takes forever to grow. It’s kind of cute real short.”

  Dawn’s mom and Mrs. Cooper agreed. “Well, whenever you get tired of your own hair,” the hair dresser began, “then try one of these.” She lifted the second duffle bag onto Dawn’s bed and unzipped it. She pulled out wigs in all styles, colors and lengths.

  Sandy squealed with delight. “Oh, Dawn! Look at this! I’ve always wanted to be a red-head!” Sandy scooped up a bright red wig, bushy with tight curls, and pulled it onto her head.

  Dawn laughed. “You look like a clown!” Dawn cried. Then she jerked on a jet-black wig in a smooth mid-length that barely covered her ears.

  “You look like an elf!” Sandy teased. “How about this?” Sandy cried, pulling on a chestnut-colored hair piece that cascaded to her shoulders.

  “‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!’” Dawn quoted laughingly.

  “Would you like to try something that looks bizarre?” Mrs. Cooper asked, her blue eyes twinkling. She held up a pink and blue hairpiece that poked up in thick spikes.

  “You could put out somebody’s eye,” Mrs. Rochelle gasped.

  “Don’t you think it’s me?” Sandy squealed and pulled it onto her head. The effect was so comical that everyone burst into laughter.

  The two girls rummaged through the pile of wigs. They eventually settled on two casual, undramatic styles that looked cute and natural on each of them. Sandy chose one more golden than her naturally blonde hair color. And Dawn chose one in a dark brown, curly style. They snuggled the wigs securely on their heads and primped in front of the mirror.

  The afternoon had been fun, but tiring. Dawn felt her energy reserves ebbing as her mom prepared to leave with Mrs. Cooper. “Thanks, Mom,” she said.

  “Yeah, thanks a whole bunch,” Sandy added. “It makes going bald a whole lot easier.”

  Mrs. Rochelle squeezed both girls tightly, blinking back some unbidden tears. “You two are wonderful kids,” she said. “I’ll do anything to make this easier for you. Anything!” She added for emphasis.

  Dawn watched her mom and Mrs. Cooper hurry away. Then she and Sandy left their room to show off their brand new hair at the nurses’ station. Afterward, Dawn fell into an exhausted sleep . . . a sleep so deep and dreamless that she didn’t even wake for supper.

  * * * * *

  The chemotherapy continue
d to take its toll on Dawn. In six weeks she’d lost 15 pounds. Her clothes hung limply on her five-foot frame. Her bones and joints ached. The nurses had to put a thick lambskin pad under her pelvis so that her hip bones wouldn’t jab and bruise her skin from the inside whenever she slept at night.

  A fine rash covered her arms and legs, a reaction to the combinations of drugs. Her blood vessels erupted, causing deep purple bruises to appear like splotches on her body. Her skin took on a blackish cast as the drugs affected the pigmentation. Scabs formed on her lips and she could no longer bear to look at her own reflection in the mirror.

  “It isn’t me, Mom,” Dawn told her mother whenever she saw her mirror image. “It isn’t me.”

  Mrs. Rochelle held Dawn’s hand tightly and smoothed her daughter’s dry, papery skin with her palm. “I know, baby,” she whispered. “And once you go into remission, you’ll get your regular face and body back. I promise.”

  Remission. To Dawn, the word sounded like an unobtainable goal, a utopia that she would never reach. Remission, she had been told, was like an island of peace and comfort, away from the drugs and chemicals that burned and hurt going into her veins. These were the drugs that caused her to retch and heave until she felt like collapsing. These drugs caused her to feel so weak and tired that she could hardly lift her head from her pillow.

  She tried to eat, but the drugs caused foods to taste peculiar, odd, strange. Sweet things turned bitter in her mouth. Chocolate tasted so horrible that the thought of brownies and fudge made her gag. Yet sometimes she developed cravings both bizarre and weird.

  The nurses were always ready to accommodate any craving, any request for food at anytime of the day or night. Dawn ate tacos at 3 A.M. and spaghetti for breakfast. She managed a watermelon-flavored milkshake one afternoon and thought it tasted wonderful.

  Her parents stood by her. They were always there, always comforting, always loving. They answered her questions, told her the truth about her illness and kept her informed about school, church and world events. Usually, she was too sick to care. But it helped knowing that they tried so hard to keep up her spirits.