Living with Cancer

Jessica was going to first grade at the John Story Jenks school in Chestnut Hill. It is a public K-8 school in a nice neighborhood. She continued with school, wearing a bandanna to cover her hair loss, and students and teachers alike were supportive. One of her teachers gave her a stuffed ostrich which she named Suzy and this year is the first year Jessica hasn't taken her with her. Suzy is living in Jessica's room upstairs, getting a little to old to travel I assume.

Jessica with her cousins Lexi and Leah. Lexi is Spencer's age.

We put our house on the market. We don't know what caused these malignancies, but we figured it was either genetics or environment and we couldn't change our genetics. It's a shame, we had just taken the equity out of our house so we weren't likely to make any money on the sale. We started looking at neighborhoods to see where we might like to live. We looked at Narberth, Media, Swarthmore, Doylestown, Springfield, Oreland and Glenside. I worked in Center City and Sandra in the Northeast, so we focused on the northern suburbs. Doylestown seemed too far out and we started looking a house in the Springfield, Oreland, Glenside areas.

Jessica continued to go to clinic weekly for check-ups, chemotherapy and the occasional spinal tap. Dr. Bruce remained her oncologist and we started making a new set of friends in the outpatient clinic vs. Spencer's inpatient staff. Jessica would get electrocardiograms occasionally as her chemotherapy had side effects that could affect her heart. Nothing was ever detected. She never fully lost her hair but is was very thin so she continued to wear the bandanna and I am sure the chemo upset her stomach, but in general she was strong. I know we went camping with Connie and John to Land's End State Park and she hiked with us. She also went skiing with us in Vail. In fact, we had a scare there. We put Jess in ski school with a bunch of other young people, Sandra and I had a great day skiing and at the end of the day we went to rendezvous with them and they were delayed due to an injury. Sandra and I fretted that we shouldn't have taken her skiing, or at least shouldn't have put her in ski school. Turned out, it wasn't her. She had a great day skiing too.

Although Jessica's treatments seemed easy compared to Spencer's, we always were on pins and needles. Would she start spiking fevers? Where did that bruise come from? When will the other shoe drop?