Almost a year….

One year ago tomorrow, our oldest girl Kate received a bone marrow transplant, exactly 7 years after her original diagnosis with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. When we were given the date of the transplant on the anniversary of her original diagnosis we told ourselves that this was a sign that we had come full circle, that this was going to be the end of our seemingly endless cancer journey. And it was, just not in the way we had hoped. On March 21 2018 Kate received a bone marrow transplant after 7 years and 3 diagnosis’s. A few short days later, on March 26, I arrived at the hospital to the news that she was bad, really bad, the worst I had EVER seen her, and that they needed to get her put immediately into a medically induced coma. Seeing her like that was indescribable. Days passed, then weeks as her body seemed to heal. The transplant was working. They began to pull back on the meds keeping her under. We worked frantically to prepare for the day when she would be able to leave the hospital. As she began to wake up we began to notice she was using her left hand rather than her right, and within a couple days she seemed to being slipping away. Her doctors tried to tell me she was just depressed and we struggled to find a way to get though. After a few days I raised the roof, had multiple hospitals in an uproar, but they finally began to pay attention. Only it was too late. There was nothing more anyone could do. Kates brain was dying. On May 8th 2018 Kate went home to the Lord, where she can stand in the sun, dance in the streets, and consume all the dairy her heart desires.