The most Blessed Season of All....

As I sit here watching TV with the girls, I just flashed back to Christmas 8 years ago. Ivee's first Christmas, our family awoke at the Ronald McDonald House, just down the street from the Children's Hospital, without her as she lay in PICU 5 days after brain surgery. 
For Christmas, that afternoon, she got the gift of her own room on the regular floor where she would spend 25 more days dealing with pain, wound leaks, fighting nurses, undergoing procedures, and having more surgeries to place a feeding tube in her stomach, tie her stomach around her esophagus and install a central line in her side where at the end of that time she began chemotherapy.
MY how our lives changed, and I cannot begin to explain how God showed me the true meaning of Christmas. How very important is to have family and how desperately we need to love other people!
MERRY CHRISTMAS to all of you! I pray that you all find the reason for this day and that you find the TRUEST love of all!

GIFT DAY: 8 Years and counting

Yesterday began the 8th anniversary week of the hardest time in my life, but a journey that has brought me more blessing over the heartache. 

I am incredibly blessed and my heart over flows with the love I have for my baby girl. I think my baby girl who have made a huge change in my life with or without the struggle she has had facing cancer. He heart is just so kind and loving. I want to share a look down memory lane, not overflowing this post with too many pictures or flashbacks. 

This was my baby girl the day after her fall from the grocery cart, with only a bruise on the forehead to show for it. The next day she would undergo a 5 hour brain surgery that would never leave her looking the same or being "normal" again. 

She would never eat by mouth again. 

She would never cry or speak normally/loudly again. 

Her eyes would never be the same. 

She would never hit developmental marks in her life like normal children do. 

She would never play like a normal child. 

These things never entered my mind, and our family had no idea she would never get a normal childhood. 

A few days after her surgery, I got to hold her. She just laid on momma's chest and stopped crying. Even now, my heart breaks seeing her this way. 

Jumping ahead, chemo was a tough, tough road. She began to get stronger after surgery (this was Valentines day 2007, two months after brain surgery). She was in the hospital, either for chemo or because she was Neutropenic. She was a happy baby through all of it, even when she looked like death was on her face. 

We made it through chemo and radiation that year and celebrated our first G.I.F.T. day that December 2007. I made a special decal just for the occasion. 

G.I.F.T. 

God Is Faithful and True

16 surgeries, 6 months chemo, 63 doses of radiation and she would always find the bright side of hospital stays. This was the last time she would have a shunt placed, and I hope it will be the last time for the rest of her life. She was 4 years old. 

She has had two hospital stays this year in TX for double pneumonia, and the look on her face when she gets home from being in there a week gives me mixed emotions. It makes me smile, but I hate that she has to find the joy in being released from IVs and hospital beds. 

Doing all we can at home means morning and night time breathing treatments x4, Cough assist machines, nebulizers, BiPap machines, Pulse Oximeters, oxygen concentrators, suction machines, Joey Pumps and feeding tubes. These are the things that try to keep her healthy and alive. Without modern medicine, I would never have had the honor to see this little girl grow up and touch so many peoples hearts and lives. 

She is a miracle, who loves to bake, though she never eats anything; loves to dance, though she struggles to keep her balance; loves to sing, though she can't be heard. She doesn't she that she can't do these things well! She just wants to do it all! 

I am incredibly blessed and she is my little ray of sunshine that reminds me that even on my darkest days, there is hope! 

Thank you GOD!