Feeling guilty

My brave little girl has to put up with a lot of crap, weekly thumb prick blood tests, daily medicines, plus a cocktail of disgusting medicines here and there, she has a hickman line in place that needs flushing every week and she is also on a horrible regime of chemicals that make her sick when she is feeling well.

Today was a bad day, we had to go to the hospital for the third time this week, normally I tell her everything that would happen but I knew that if I told her what would happen today it would just cause her even more stress.

Today she had chemotherapy via an injection in her leg. Oncaspar has only been given to her twice before and that was whilst she was on the ward at her lowest so I know she has forgotten about it and I know she will forget about this in a few weeks but for now she hates me, she hates the fact that I pinned her down whilst the nurses gave her the injection and she hates the fact that I didn’t tell her what was going to happen.

How am I supposed to explain everything that is going to happen to her? There is some things happening in the future that she doesnt know about, her hickman line (or wiggle/snake) will come out in a month or two and then her monthly vincristine will be done through a cannula and I know that this will be a traumatizing experience for her and at the moment I cant stand the thought of telling her. She still remembers having a cannula put in when we first got admitted to the hospital, she remembers being squeezed by the male nurses and she remembers me holding her down. Every time she has an injection she mentions it so how can I tell her there is more of that to come.

So I am feeling guilty, guilty that I know what is coming and she doesn’t and guilty that it will cause her a lot of pain. For now I will keep my mouth closed, this is all a few months off and we have a lot of days to get through first.