| I am happy that you
came to see me
play on the tire swing. It's in the park, and when I'm there, I can run, jump, climb, bounce and
see-saw, too. If you decided to run, I
would chase you
like a cougar and I would not stop until you stop.
And I’m really good at tag and hide and seek.
My feet are fast. I’m fast, but I’m just Hunter. That’s what I like to be best. Sometimes, I jump on the bed in my Spiderman jammies. And I run around in my red cape. But, I’m still Hunter, not Spiderman.  What do you like to do? Here are a few of my favorite things: jumping, playing Thomas the Tank Engine on my tracks, reading books, coloring, rolling Playdoh balls, and watching movies. I have a lot of engines and I have blue tracks, wood tracks, and gray tracks...sometimes I play with my matchbox cars and motorcycles all around the house. I like to watch Thomas the Tank movies and Baby Einstein ones with my baby sister Lilly. What do you think of her sitting in the grocery cart with me? I have a grown up sister and brother, too. They're teenagers, Addy and Sean-Luc.  When I was a baby I was sick, and I'm glad that I
don't remember a lot of it. I was the same
size as Lilly is now when I was
sick. When I was almost a-year-and-a-half,
I fell down some stairs, and when I went to the hospital and got an
xray, everyone learned that I had something inside my head that had no
business being there. It was a brain tumor, discovered by accident! The
doctors did an operation on
my head to take a tumor out. My mommy said I
looked like a bionic boy because in the hospital, the tumor was taken
out and some
tubes and wires were put in my chest and belly. Some tubes were there
so that I could get strong medicine called chemo to get rid of the
tumor everyone was talking about. Other tubes were there so I could get
food in my belly when my mouth didn't feel like eating, When I had
chemo, my mouth got sore, so it was a good thing that one of the tubes
went in my belly. That way I could stay healthy, even though I felt
pretty sick (that's what my mommy told me).
 Luckily, I’m not
sick anymore. Now, I go to school, and I get to
visit
with my friends on play dates. I don’t go
to the hospitals everyday, either, only when I
need to have an MRI. Remember all
those tubes I had? Well now, I have scars in those places, one on my
chest, and another on my belly. My head has a
scar on it too, but
I’ve never seen it because it’s behind me, so I don't even mind. Now, I can
slide down the slide on my belly and it doesn’t hurt a bit. Thanks
for coming to read my story. Would you like to learn more? |
| To the frog ponds |
To write to Hunter |
To the sitemap |
Joan Fleitas, Ed.D., R.N.
Associate Professor of Nursing
Lehman College, CUNY
Bronx, New York 10468
January 28, 2007