act relatively meekly, as we thought he knew that not one of us actually liked him all that much anymore. We were greatly surprised and very ticked off by his unexpected attitude. Dad waltzed into the house, kissed Mum on the cheek, said ‘G’day, dear’ and acted as if nothing had ever happened. I could have snorted, truly. I just thought, ‘Who do you think you’re fooling, dude?’ but I said nothing, and he continued on with his deluded ‘happy family’ charade.
The next day I had made plans to finally catch up with my friend Emma, who I hadn’t seen in AGES. We were going to see (500) Days of Summer, which I was really looking forward to. Lunch was good, and the movie was truly awesome, but when I called home asking someone to come and pick me up, Dad was there. He immediately stuck his hand up a little too overexcitedly at the opportunity to spend about three minutes of ‘quality’ time with his youngest daughter. Gee, thanks, Dad. As soon as Mum told me he was coming, I groaned and said I did NOT want him to pick me up. I believe I then may (or may not) have made various non-threatening threats to Mum for allowing him to come and get me. I was not looking forward to the three very long minutes it would take to get home.
* * *
Peta survived the drive home, and indeed the rest of her father’s visit, although I wouldn’t say it was comfortable for her. Not so long ago we were a normal (although some might question that!), happy family who enjoyed each other’s company. Sadly, this was no longer the case. I cannot explain how or why things changed so dramaticaly for us. My focus was purely on Peta and her illness and treatment. Nothing else mattered.
Peta went to school when she could and tried to maintain some sort of normality. We had adjusted as best we could to life with cancer. We had very little time to think about anything — a cancer diagnosis does not allow time for that. You just put your trust in the people who know what they are doing. You have to believe that everything will be alright. The whole family embraced Peta’s illness with our typical humour. Peta was known to use the line, ‘I can’t do that, I have cancer,’ when asked to perform a simple household task. Her sister, Justine, soon extended that to, ‘I couldn’t possibly do that, my sister has cancer!’
Peta had always possessed a droll sense of humour and we laughed heartily when one day she recounted a conversation with a fellow student. It had been a warm day at school and a concerned classmate asked Peta how she was. Peta thought she could have considered her response a little better — she had simply replied, ‘Ohhh, I’m dying!’
We had learnt so much about ALL in the short time since Peta’s diagnosis. ALL is all about numbers. The numbers indicate how your body is: haemoglobin, platelets, neutrophils, these three things were the most important indicators. When you are on chemo, those things can change overnight. I made sure the car always had a full tank of petrol, as we never knew when we would have to grab a bag and go to Melbourne or to Traralgon. Emergency situations happened just like that. Every time we pulled in to the RCH car park, Peta turned her nose up at the smell of the city. She had always had a keen sense of smell and this was heightened by the chemo. Her reaction made me laugh every single time.
By now we were regular visitors to Ronald Mac House, a place we were very grateful for. Prior to Peta’s illness we had never supported McHappy Day, but that had changed for us now. I was so grateful for this facility. It became our home away from home; and while it wasn’t home, it wasn’t hospital either, which was important for Peta. Depending on whom I had spoken to in the office, we often had a downstairs room. That was so much better for Peta, as Vincristine gave her terrible knee and ankle pain. This told us that the drug was hitting the spot, as blood is produced in the marrow in your joints. Climbing stairs was far too difficult for Peta when her body was reacting as though she were in her veteran years.
We now understood the science of chemotherapy a little better, and knew that a large part of treatment was preparing the body for the hit of chemicals it was about to receive. Peta had a course of Prednisolone to help protect her organs from the effects of the chemo and she wore a big, round, rosy face as a result. Diabetes can be a side effect of steroid treatment as it makes you ravenously hungry but, thankfully, Peta was spared that complication. Six weeks into treatment, things were becoming more intense. The transfusions were more frequent, making neutropenia — a decreased number of neutrophils, which help protect the body against infection — more likely. This meant that infections were now more frequent, too.
October began with Peta having an early morning trip to theatre so a port could be attached to a major blood vessel. This would make the frequent delivery of her chemotherapy much easier. The procedure was done under a general anaesthetic and, as a special three-for-one deal, she also had a bone marrow aspirate and a lumbar puncture. This was routinely done to make the delivery of the chemo more comfortable and to alleviate the chance of veins collapsing from such regular access. The ‘comfortable’ part was an interesting notion — having someone drive the equivalent of a four-inch needle into your body on a regular basis was far from comfortable. Peta’s port was located right on the bra line, just on the left breast, which was a plain nuisance much of the time. Every time she rolled over in bed the thing seemed to roll as well, which was a very strange sensation. Pete decided she was going to need some new pretty bras from then on. Who knew who was going to see them, and a girl needed to be presentable as well as comfortable.
Peta’s port was inserted without any problems, and she was safely returned to the third floor to recover. She came out of theatre with the port accessed and ready for her dose of chemo, but late in the day our doctor, Peter Downie, came up to chat with us. He had come in on his day off and explained that there was something extremely unusual between Peta’s twelfth and thirteenth chromosomes. This was the first time we had any inkling of Peta’s genetic uniqueness — she was B cell and only five percent of patients are B cell. The doctor thought we should go home and return the next Tuesday, as some more in-depth discussions needed to take place. The good news was that Peta was now in remission.
We were given the ‘okay’ to leave. The only trouble was that Peta had an insuflon in her stomach for administering chemo. No-one thought to remove the needle, so Peta endured a sharp sting in her stomach over four days. By the time we returned to the hospital, the spot had become very painful. Needless to say, Peta was happy to have it out. I was taught how to inject Peta through the insuflon. For the first two or three injections I didn’t know who was more afraid: me or her. I had never imagined that I would need to do this sort of thing — it was hardly in the mums’ manual. Peta insisted that I wear my glasses for this procedure, and rightly so, as the spot was miniscule. Peta’s new port proved right from the start to be extremely tricky to access and seemed to sit very deeply. Because ports are not firmly attached, they can move around until enough scar tissue builds up to help stabilise them. Even our very experienced day oncology nurses, who could almost access ports in their sleep, cursed the wretched thing for a while, but they mastered it soon enough. On one occasion, the port seemed to have flipped over. It wasn’t until Peta was out of it in theatre that two of our nurses, working in tandem, successfully accessed it.
In the days immediately after the initial diagnosis I had said that the best thing anyone could do for Peta would be to buy her a new bed. Peta’s bed was totally past its use-by date, and well and truly ready for the tip. Her friend Michael took that request to our school principal. The school community rallied around and quickly raised the funds.
Late one Saturday afternoon, Pete and I returned home to find her bed on the front porch. Soon after, Bronte and Claire and her brother, Ross, knocked on our door, ready to install a new queen-size bed, complete with all new linen, pillows, doona and, as an optional extra, waterproof lining (just in case). Ross, Claire and Bronte had encountered a day of disasters getting the bed to our door. There had been numerous problems and delays, capped off by a flat tyre in transit. While all this was happening Justine
