outdoor time (open)

[milly]

Amelia was out and about her mother had decided it was ok for her to take a short walk on two conditions. She wasn’t out late and she didn’t do anything that was a risk to her fragile health. Amelia didn’t have time to be a moody preteen and mope around and do nothing about her situation. Amelia had to stand up for herself. She had to make herself be seen and heard especially by people her age who heard the word cancer and went running for the hills. She was the kind of person who didn’t let that get to her though, she was old enough now that she knew people reacted to things they didn’t know by running away from them. She just dealt with what life threw at her which was apparently Cancer. She didn’t remember a time that cancer wasn’t tagged to her name in some way shape or form. Milly had lived with her diagnosis her whole life because she was so young when it was tagged to her. She was only an infant when she was given a diagnosis that was as serious as Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

Amelia probably could write a book on it if she wanted to she had heard adults talk to her about it all the time. She liked the ones who actually talked to her the best though not the ones who talked to her parents like it was answering her questions. She was the one with the illness not her parents and yes though they were the ones who had to handle it she wanted to know. Milly was always that kid who asked questions as soon as she was old enough to understand. At first it had been questions of does it hurt and other childish things. By the age of ten she was asking for things to help her medical treatments like getting a portcath put in so that they wouldn’t have to stick her every time she went into the hospital. And if she needed to switch antirejection drugs depending on what they were changing on her treatments or if she was feeling depressed she’d ask what helped without taking meds.

Milly had to be responsible for herself somewhat so that her mom and dad could have a break and focus on her older siblings. She was at the point where she made her mom and dad leave when she was getting maintenance chemo because the thing took anywhere between an hour and two hours and she liked to sleep for a little while after wards. So this gave her parents a chance to focus on Elliot, Samson and Ruby. She loved her siblings and she really wished that they got more attention because she didn’t feel like it was fair that she was so demanding while they just sat there. She didn’t even want to be demanding, but her disease made her such. A simple bruise on her, or a bloody nose was enough to cause a panic in the Honeycutt household. God forbid she ever had a fever or wanted to sleep a few extra hours.

Although like most preteens she did sleep in and she remembered that being a big thing when she started doing that. Amelia had started sleeping in and not waking up until somewhere between ten and ten thirty in the morning. Which sent Heidi Honeycutt into a frenzy and straight to the oncologist they went. Of course Dr. Hoyt was very nice about and just laughed and told her mother welcome to the world of a preteen. Explaining to the frantic mother that the behavior was completely normal and she probably didn’t register it with her other children as much because they had never been as sick as Milly had been. Milly had been relieved that her doctor was on her side that she was just exercising her right to be a teenager even though she wasn’t one yet. She would be lucky if she made it to be a teenager but she wasn’t going to worry about that yet it was just over a year away so she was holding out hope she’d still be healthy by that time.

But with how she’d been feeling as of lately she doubted it majorly. Milly was feeling symptoms that hinted toward her cancer being back. She was achy all over, tired, and she had been bruising easily but those could be side effects of her drugs to. So she was going to wait until her blood tests came back