Loving Hannah

Loving Hannah: Childhood Cancer Treatment from the Other Side of the Bed is a memoir by Carol Glover which chronicles a Nurse Practitioner's experience with her eleven-year-old daughter’s childhood cancer. Over a six-week period in the spring of 2002, Hannah, a vibrant, energetic athlete, top of her fifth grade class, and a school leader becomes increasingly tired, losses her appetite and begins to have a series of seemingly unrelated health problems. None of the doctors who see her provide an answer. Finally, at the insistence of the author, further testing is done which reveals a diagnosis of Acute Myeloid Leukemia. The events leading to the diagnosis and the ensuing fight to keep Hannah alive over the next seven months of chemotherapy treatment are told with an insider's view and knowledge of health care. Twenty years of experience as a Nurse Practitioner, hadn’t prepared the author for this reversal in roles. The familiar in medicine becomes alien when applied to someone she loves. The author struggles to maintain a balance between being the mother of a critically ill child and her usually role as a health care provider. Her knowledge gives her an advantage in anticipating problems, but knowing so many of the risks increases her fear that her daughter will not survive. Through the difficult months of treatment and complications, there are also many gifts---including the ability to live in the now, an increasing family closeness, and the author’s ability to see her professional work in a new light. Hannah's strength, humor, wisdom, and determination to survive are an inspiration. This upbeat story of survival will touch anyone who has had a family member afflicted with childhood cancer, knows a community member with cancer, or is a nurse or doctor working with cancer patients.