Ah, Mom, bliss. Isn’t it beautiful?The absolute joy that filled your soul when those two pink lines came across that tiny window of the “pee stick.” And the absolute horror, but uncanny humor when you took your second pregnancy test only to find your toddler playing with it like a magic wand, waving it over their head screaming, “voila!”
Parenthood is wonderful and ever so entertaining. Life truly begins when that beautiful child of yours caresses the arch of your arms and you see their beautiful face for the very first time. But what happens when the life of your child, the child that breathes the very life into you, is threatened?
When everything you once knew about being a mother or father changes indefinitely and things are no longer, “kiss a boo-boo, Mommy, and make it better.” Rather, in a matter of minutes it becomes, “Please, doctor, tell me my baby is going to live.”
I pleaded for the oncology doctor at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to tell me the words I so desperately wanted to hear, “Is she going to live? Is she going to make it through this? Doctor, is my child going to survive?”
“We’re going to do everything we can,” uttered the lead leukemia oncologist with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
Still, I begged repeatedly for this doctor to give the slightest hint that my child was going to be OK. Instead, he continued on to give survival statistics, relapse rate and treatment plans which included us living in the hospital for the next seven months for our daughter's very aggressive chemo treatments. We came to find out, soon after, those chemo treatments would be the very thing that took our daughters innocent, childlike nature from her.
Hours before our daughter got sick, she was completely normal. She hadn’t run a fever or been sick in years. She was our happy, beautiful, loving, tenderhearted, intelligent, precious and a normal 3-year-old daughter.
She had gone to her twin cousin's birthday party earlier that day, only hours before our greatest nightmare began. Our daughter had begun complaining of a headache, followed by profuse vomiting that lasted for the next 12 hours overnight as we waited for the Sunday clinic to open first thing that morning so we could get a prescription of nausea medicine. However, we never really made it to the clinic; Maylee (our daughter) had begun to throw up green bile from her liver, so it was straight to the emergency room we went.
I could write a book solely based off the next 24 hours of our life, but 24 hours almost exactly after Maylee began getting sick that Saturday, we were in an ambulance on our way to the Children’s Hospital in Atlanta.
Just 12 hours after we arrived at the Children’s Hospital, I found myself begging at the mercy of the doctor's words and giving it my all to drag hope from this doctor who had just ripped the very heart from my chest.
Yes, only 48 hours before this very moment; I was a mom just like you. A mom whose biggest care was making sure my children were well taken of, well provided for and raised with great morals and responsibility. While my husband and I still have these same goals in our parenting, we had to add coaching a tiny warrior to our memoir of parenting.
Yes, things are different and parenting bliss has gone out the window. But somewhere in the mix of it all, a warrior was born. Four warriors were born actually; warrior princess Maylee, warrior Daddy, warrior Mommy and warrior Phoenix (baby brother). Together, we conquered the world. Separately, we lived for seven months as childhood cancer tore down the legacy we built piece by piece, only to have the hands of Jesus build back an exceedingly better legacy in the midst of the storm.
What if tomorrow you were forced to lose your mom-bliss because of childhood cancer? What if tomorrow a scraped knee for your child becomes obsolete because your greatest worry instead becomes the fight of your child’s life with cancer? What if you're faced with thought of tomorrow never rising for your child because of childhood cancer? What if -- because of childhood cancer -- tomorrow really never does comes for your precious son or daughter?
Help us today to be sure tomorrow you don’t become one of us: A cancer mom. Do your research, find a childhood cancer organization and involve your entire family, churches, schools and communities!
Let’s make tomorrow a lingering place for parenting bliss. Let’s fight for the rights of our children today, tomorrow and every day! Let’s stand for a world where cancer doesn’t threaten the lives of our children. A world where our children are meant more to the biggest cancer research funding companies, than just four percent. Let’s stand for the joyful, tender and beautiful parenting bliss that we each desire to to carry with us for the rest of our lives as soon as we realize, “I'm going to become a parent.”
