“How?” they asked in unison.
“We call the technique ‘Imaging,’” Dr. Kneeland explained. “Here’s how it works. First, stop thinking about the negative. Concentrate on the positive. Gather your body’s inner resources and picture themliterallyattacking the cancer cells and beating them up. Stomp on them! Punch them! Fight them! Picture the chemotherapy treatments helping you to do this.
“Sometimes, it helps to draw a picture of your personal image fighting the cancer cells. Hang that picture on the wall, concentrate on it every day, and believe that’s what’s happening inside you! A strong, positive attitude can help as much as all the medicines the doctors are giving you. I’ve done lots of research on this. It works and I can prove it.”
“You mean, I’ll get well if I want to badly enough?” Sandy asked.
“We believe that the ‘will to live’ has a scientific basis. You can fight your own disease and improve your life’s quality during the course of the disease. And that enhances your chance of recovery,” Dr. Kneeland told her.
Dawn turned the doctor’s comments over and over in her mind. They made sense to her. Good health was the natural state of her body. Cancer was the unnatural state. The thought actually made her mad. How dare those old cancer cells move into my body! she thought.
“How do we do this ‘Imaging’?” Dawn asked, eager to help in her own treatment.
The slender doctor smiled warmly. “I have a whole program for you. Certain steps toward relaxation are followed. Then you concentrate on turning your own bodily defenses against the invader. I will train you and help you every step of the way,” she said.
Dr. Kneeland gave the girls sheets of papers outlining the Imaging process. Dawn scanned it
quickly. It looked simple enough. “Just think positively,” she said.
“Exactly!” Dr. Kneeland said.
“It seems too simple,” Sandy drawled.
“Can I pray to get well, too?” Dawn asked.
“Absolutely! Don’t let the cancer get strong. You get strong. You fight it. You imagine it as ugly and weak and frightened of medical treatment. Can you girls do that?” the doctor asked.
Dawn nodded, feeling renewed vitality and hope about getting well. “I wish I could draw,” she mused. “I’d draw a picture of an army of teddy bears charging out to fight these green, gloppy looking blobs. My teddy bears would be riding white horses and carrying long lances like knights of the Round Table.” She started giggling at the thought of Mr. Ruggers leading a brigade of pandas, potbellies, and fuzzy-wuzzies in her defense.
Dr. Kneeland snapped her fingers and applauded. “That’s right, Dawn. You’ve got the idea. Fight! Don’t let the cancer cells gain an inch. Fight them for every cell of your body!”
After the doctor left, Dawn and Sandy scanned the papers she’d left with them. Dawn was determined to follow the Imaging program faithfully. “At least I’ll be doing something to help!” she told her pert roommate.
But the queasiness returned to her stomach that evening. Dawn crawled meekly into her bed and pulled the covers over her head, longing for
the horrible nausea to pass.
Visiting hours brought some of her friends from school. Kim looked on the verge of tears and Rhonda looked scared. The silence between them stretched over several moments before Kim finally managed, “Gee … cancer… What a rotten deal!”
Don’t feel sorry for me! Dawn thought. She didn’t want their pity.
“Jake asked about you,” Rhonda said, trying to fill up the awkwardness between them.
Dawn’s heart gave a little flip-flop. “Jake Macka,” Dawn said to herself. She had had a crush on him since the fifth grade. And now that she was sick, he asked about her. Big deal, she thought sourly.
“The … uh … cheerleaders made you this card,” Rhonda said. She handed Dawn a homemade card filled with signatures of the twelve-member cheerleading squad.
“Thanks,” she said and ran her hands across the surface.
“Mrs. Talbert says she’ll come by to see you, too,” Kim added.
“That’ll be nice,” Dawn said. But she secretly wished her Phys. Ed. teacher and cheerleading coach would not come to see her. She felt strange, lying in a hospital bed and trying to make small talk with friends who didn’t understand her state of mind. She wished everyone would just stay away!
Finally, her friends left and Dawn lay back against the pillow and took deep breaths. Her mood had grown sullen and dark.
“Hard, isn’t it?” asked Sandy from the next bed.
“What’s hard?” Dawn asked.
“Seein’ and bein’ around normal people,” Sandy answered. Dawn nodded, trying to rise above her depression.
“Half of them don’t know what to say, and the other half say the wrong things,” Sandy continued, “Bein’ sick like this
nobody really knows what it’s like. They say they understand, but they really don’t.” A small crack in Sandy’s voice caused Dawn to blink hard against the sting in her own eyes.
“We understand,” Dawn told Sandy fiercely.
“That Jake,” Sandy ventured after a minute of silence. “Is he your boyfriend?”
“No,” Dawn confessed. “I-I sort of like him, but he’s not my boyfriend.” Then she asked, “Do you have a boyfriend?”
Sandy’s voice grew soft. “Sort of. A guy back home, Jason Jensen, kind of likes me
” Her voice trailed and Dawn noticed Sandy’s cheeks blushing. She blushed slightly, too, remembering her own feelings about Jake.
“He … he kissed me once,” Sandy added in a soft whisper. “It was real sweet, like he really meant it.”
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 3.
The war against Dawn’s cancer intensified. She took drugs by mouth and drugs by Ws. 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 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, TV. 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 effect 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 this 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.