Family Misses Chemo Appointment Due to Boston Lockdown - East Idaho News
Health

Family Misses Chemo Appointment Due to Boston Lockdown

  Published at

Getty 100511 ChemoDrugStock?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1366477808391iStockphoto/Thinkstock(BOSTON) — Jane Roper was supposed to head to Boston Children’s Hospital Friday morning so that her 6-year-old daughter, Clio, could receive a round of chemotherapy to treat her leukemia. But instead of getting treatment, Clio and the rest of Roper’s family were stuck indoors after the lockdown of Boston and its surrounding suburbs.

In the neighborhoods next to Roper’s Medford, Mass., home, numerous law enforcement officers were going door-to-door in search of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the remaining suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.

While Roper said a slight delay in Clio’s chemotherapy treatment shouldn’t affect her health, Roper’s nerves have been frayed in the aftermath of the Monday’s bombings and now the violent manhunt that resulted in the death of one suspect and an MIT security officer.

“It all hits so close to home,” said Roper. “This is crazy. You never expect to see the whole area under siege.”

Roper and her twin six-year-old daughters, Clio and Elsa, were at mile 25 of the Boston Marathon cheering on runners as they neared last mile of the race, but left before the bombs went off.

Roper heard about the explosions while headed towards Boston Children’s Hospital with Clio. The 6-year-old had been hospitalized for a week with fevers and other complications from her chemotherapy.  Clio had been given special permission by her doctors to attend the race for a few hours.

On Thursday, Clio was released from the hospital, and the family hoped to take her out for breakfast with her sister on Friday morning before chemotherapy. It would have been a bit of normalcy for a family going through its own ordeal. But instead, Roper woke up to find that residents of Boston and its suburbs were advised to remain indoors with the doors locked. The family field trip for breakfast would have to wait for another day.

Cooped up indoors with her children, Roper was relying on social media for news because the televised news could scare her girls. But even with that extra safeguard, Roper said, her daughters still know not everything is normal.

“One of them just said, ‘This day is weird,’” said Roper. “This is a day unlike any other day, and I don’t want to experience it ever again.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

SUBMIT A CORRECTION