Round 2....

Ok, so I haven't written in quite some time...Not sure if that is because of being busy or because I have been afraid to. When I write I really allow myself to feel....and most days I don't want to feel. I am afraid to "feel". If I did, I would never get out of bed. I would simply cry all day long. I cannot begin to adequately convey how much I hate cancer. I hate that my baby is fighting for her life right now and the best that I can do is tell her I love her and pretend that I know that she will pull through this. I don't let her see the fear that grips my heart. I am so overwhelmed emotionally and I don't know who to turn to. As I sat this morning at the kitchen table preparing Heather's weekly medicine and supplements, I just stopped and gazed...This is what her life, my life, our lives have become. A seemingly never-ending future of pills and supplements and treatments and needles and bloodwork and MRI's and surgeries and doctor visits. I was so afraid of her growing weary....though I think I am the one becoming weary...she has seemingly become stronger. She broke my heart the other night... She came and got me out of bed to talk to me. She said,"Mom, It seems like all I can ever think about when I go to sleep now is dying, and I'm not afraid of it. I'm more worried about leaving you guys and how you will be after I die." She said, "I am thankful that this happened to me because it has really brought me and God closer. We talk all the time now." Oh how much more spiritually minded she is than me. I am grateful beyond words that she has been able to develop this deep relationship with God. I just can't lose her. I honestly do not know how I will live without her if He takes her. For those that don't know we received the results from her latest MRI to check post treatment results....Her cancer has slightly progressed with no notable shrinkage of anything. It helped nothing. Besides giving my baby girl irreparable damage to her brain that she will experience for the rest of her life if she survives this. I am thankful that her 2 focal tumors have not grown, but they greatly enhanced which indicates they are growing now. So at best, the radiation/chemo bought us 6 weeks. Which if that is all I can have, then I am grateful. She goes in early in the morning tomorrow to have a port a cath implanted . She will have surgery. The cath will run from her upper left side of her chest to right above her heart. A relatively simple surgery that LOTS of children have done, but the thought of something being implanted in her and placed right above her heart terrifies me. They plan to inject these poisons into her and put them directly above her heart. The need for this is that it decreases the risk of the chemo accidentally coming into contact with her skin and causing burns....THEY ARE INJECTING THIS STUFF INTO MY PRECIOUS CHILD'S BODY! And I can do nothing. I have to let them inject THREE of these poisons into my baby for an entire YEAR in hopes that it will kill the cancer but not kill her. This is the ugliness of cancer. Childhood cancer. Days like today I just want to melt down and roll up into a ball and close my eyes so tightly and pray that when I open them this is all a dream. A terrible horrible dream. I just want time and life to STOP. I often feel like screaming at the top of my lungs, though no one would be there to hear my cries...Life will not stop. Life continues on as it always have...while our lives are in shambles....everyone else's isn't. Everyone goes about their normal day while my daughter fights for her life. I am just being really real atm. I know that these words are unfair, but it's how I feel. It's how every parent with a terminally ill child feels. Even our own lives have to continue. Work must still be done, so money can be made and bills can be paid. It's weird, because all we could dream for is for our normal lives back and our babies to be healthy, but to have this happen and continue on with everything like it isn't happening is gut-wrenching. Ugh, is all I can say. Ugh. The saddest part is....that I am a drop in the bucket compared to all the parents out there that are living this. All the parents that are saying goodbye to their babies today because cancer won the fight. All the parents that are trying to figure out how to live life with a major piece of it missing. I see it everyday now. A mother who lost her 12 year old son to brain cancer just 2 days before Heather was diagnosed trying to survive his death and somehow just "move on" with life without him. It's so heart-breaking to see...Watching a parent who's life has adapted and morphed over the course of months or even YEARS into everyday's focus is on beating their child's cancer, to not knowing what to do after their child passes. The battle is over and their hands are left empty. They look around and just don't know how to function. All they have become accustomed to just halts. No more doctor visits, or blood work, or chemo, or scans. No more life to fight for. No more hugs or kisses, or hearing, "I love you". No more smiles, or caresses, or deep looks into beautiful eyes. I see these parents and my heart grieves so greatly for them....and then unimaginable fear grips me that one day I might be them and I grieve for myself. I cannot tell you how much I HATE grieving for my child that isn't dead yet. Living with the daily "what if's" the future holds... I have many mornings when I wake and fear that she might have passed in her sleep and I hold my breath while I go in to check on her. Then relief comes when seeing she is fine, to then having the realization that one day, I might be presented with the opposite. One day holding her still body and begging God for another breath. One more time to tell her I love her. To hear her voice, to see her amazing smile, to look into her eyes. There is so much fear. All the time. But, all suppressed and neatly hidden away. I can't allow Heather to see it. And having the opportunity to confide it all to someone else is a rarity. So goes life I guess, and why I am SO thankful for a blog!! Even if no one ever reads it, it gives me the opportunity to let out my feelings...and sometimes that's all I need. agh......... Now, to wipe my eyes, and go fold some laundry with the feeling of gratefulness that I still have 3 children to fold clothes for.