bumper sticker
Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 11:10am | Edit Note | Delete
As most of you know by now that Ashley if not IN the hospital visits the oncology clinic several times a week for bloodwork. Most of the time it is routine unless its more serious then Darcy accompanies me. However, having said that i have been in clinic many a times when information has come down the pipeline while i was there on my own. Sometimes it is like being in a foriegn country with no direction home. I feel my body go into panic mode but know i cannot show it in front of Ashley(well thats my theory,Shee sees it all over my face as i excuse myself to use the washroom they really need to make some sound proof parent rooms in that hospital...i'll just add it to my wish list for the new hospital). Usually when i remember how to dial the phone number it is either to darcy , my sister or my aunt who lives close by. When "my team" works there words of comfort on me to get me back down to earth i know its time to face the 100km journey home. Allright stop saying"OMG what is she doing on lthe road" I have to its my job and i CAN put it aside for my drive home, so no fear! When it was winter time and we were commuting home i would walk in the door like we had just driven a tank down the roads of khandahar. Darcy would be getting home as well and didn't seem to share the same feeling of the road as i did. I would tell him how rude people were on the road and how they'd tailgate or cut me off or how they tried to rush decisions ouuta me. Darcy drives for a l;iving so he probably sees it all the time and it doesn''t phase him anymore, i think he's convinced that people shouldn't be allowed to drive w/o at least 10 years driving experience(yes i get the logic, its like not letting your daughter date til she's married)Anyways i knew this information scared him because he goes on inccesantly about "what to do" when people are driving like @##$%'s His words always as i leave anywhere is "DRIVE CAREFULLY' he worries about the other people on the roadhe says , he tells me he thinks im a good driver, but he knows this is territory i never had to deal with before.
Anyways we were in the hospital the other day and he comes walking out of the gift shop with 2 bumper stickers advertising "childrens hospital" on them. I asked "what are you going to do with those" he looks at me as if the question didn't need to be asked. "but you hate bumper stickers , you cringe at them, especially those honour roll one's where people yammer on about their kids(Sorry outt here if you have one of those stickers)and now you want to let the world know we are prisoners at childrens hospital"(I know the more optimistic view would be "guests of childrens hospital"...not there yet).
Anyways it was my turn to go into the hospital the next day , the feeling/karma on the road was easy , Port Mann wasn't backed up , people were nice etc etc. We get to the hospital, i retrive our stuff form the trunk and as im pulling the trunk down i see the bumper sticker on the car, he had already put it on. Two seconds later Darcy calls me on my phone"did you get there ok" "Yeah(duh)"After the conversation it all hit me, i got it, i figured it out why this man who hates bumper stickers applied one to the back of a brand new vehicle...it was to let the world know " this woman has to drive to childrens hospital all the time with my daughter who bravely fights cancer, please be nice to her , cut her some slcak, i wish i could be there to drive them each time but i can't this is all i can do to make sure they get there and back safely...thank you, a father bear"
I Like my bumper sticker now, some times it remiinds me of how much our life has changed, where my second home is, what this disease has taken from us but mostly it reminds me of how much Darcy takes care about us even when were not totether.
We should all have bumper stickers on our cars that tell the world Please be nice to this person because...."she is going through a divorce"..."Just lost her husband" "is being abused" then maybe we would all wave at eachother or say a prayer for them instead of flipping them off or tail gating them and wouldn't it be nice if someone who loved us put the bumper sticker on for us.
love and peace (bumper sticker to you all)
love lori
The Journey of a butterfly...Ashleys life has become symbolic of a butterfly, peaceful beautiful and free to fly where the wind takes her. We have a white butterfly that flies around us in the garden in the springtime where the other girls play. Irish folklore tells us that a white butterfly is the rebirth of a deceased child's soul reborn into something even more beautiful than before...our butterfly
June 29 1992 - February 16 2009
Welcome to the Journey of a Butterfly
We invite you to follow along one family's journey through grief and loss, one brave young girl's journey through faith and inspiration, this is not a blog to convert anyone , nor is it a blog about fundraising , it is what i hope will reach another family on a similar journey, we are not experts , i could not give you a magic remedy for how one gets through disease and devestation but it is our story , sometimes gut wrenching other time heartwarming and all of the time, i guarantee, very real. We are not perfect, we struggle daily and i think that the more we connect to one another the more we understand what this journey through life is all about . Sometimes that path is bumpy and we fall down, sometimes we sit and stop a while,or take a step back and other times we pound our fists on the pavement like a lunatic , still other times we find ourselves picking eachother up dusting eachother off and walking alongside them even if only for short time. This blog is dedicated to Ashley , her sisters and every single angel that picked us up along this road.
This is an introduction to the beginning and middle part of our journey the specific blogs are more indepth , the end...well there will never be an end to this journey i've come to realize that , not on this earth, for now we just assimilate it into our life like a hole , a missing limb, a continous ache that you just learn to live with.
When Ashley was about 12 years old she asked if she could go to youth group at a local church , i didn't have any church upbringing but know i craved it throughout my life , this was a rare opportunity and i recognized that if i didn't embrace it now she may lose her interst in it very quickly and beocme a jaded, cynical, stubborn person like her mom. My husband grew up in a very religious (shove it down your throat) kinda religion( i wont mention any names)or maybe it was the way he was raised ? Anyways i encouraged her to go because the community we had moved to embraced this kinda thing so i thought why not? Naturally and shortly after she started attending she was soon encouraging us to go , she had made quite a leadership name for herself there , pionner leader , sunday school helper etc, i was comfortable for the first time in my life going to a church, maybe it was the first word that greeted you as you walked in..."belong" maybe it was because they embraced community and outreach service in our city , dont know, but soon found it very therapeutic, cheaper than a shrink, and our other 3 girls jumped on board pretty quickly, my husband well... a work in progress , he communes with God in a fishing boat he says , although makes many efforts to go even if just for good way to start the week, i was still cynical , felt i wasnt holy enough but went anyways.
Ashley was scheduled to sing a solo in the church choir Dec 16 2007 , i was scared for her, i was sure she got her singing skills from me which was nil at best. She sang beautifully and you couldnt tell she had been complaining of cramps , something i chalked up to girls stuff/growing pains for a couple weeks off and on, she was an active healthy girl. When the performnce was done we got our christmas tree and i took her to the clinic to have it checked out before Christmas , they sent us to our local hosptial for tests , i was worried it was appendix. Darcy, my husband left the hosptial to go pick up our other 3 girls from friends houses , i caught the doctor in the ahallways and asked if the ulstrasound pictures were back, i remember having eye contact with Ashley only feet away from me but far enough away for her not to hear the doctor to so impassionaltely say "its not appendix, it looks like cancer", i have to stop as i write this because it is still one of the 2 biggest shocks in my entire life, i think i ran down the hallways screaming with no sound coming from my throat and not knowing where i was running . I phoned Darcy and words didnt come out of my mouth. Before I knew it we were at out local Childrens Hospital(100km away) meeting oncologiosts , being give an "oncology team" which consisted of a primary nurse, a social worker, a main oncologist and a shrink....wait a minute ...what is an oncologist? yep, a cancer doctor, this was the real thing . we waited 4 days to find out what type we were dealing with ... it was curable 90 % even though she was stage 4 , how the hell can my kid have stage 4 cancer and only a few cramps , it was mind bending. We were thrown stright into a world so foriegn to us , everything stopped ..jobs ..PAC meetings ,carppoling and yes even some friends who"couldn't handle it" it was no longer our own beds , our own home, our own anything. Treatments and life became unbearable , the 90% cure rate was not looking good at any stage throughout our journey , it seemd to be always full of negative news to the point where i couldnt stand the face of her oncologist , it nearly made me want to vomit everytime i saw him...The words they briefed us on as we began this mind altering path was " one of you will grieve through this process and no matter the out come the other will grieve after " they couldn't have been more right.......Ashley insisted on going to church on Christmas eve, two nights before she was to start chemo at the end of the service our pastor came to pray with us , i didn't know many people in the church , but wow did they know Ashley, when we rose our heads from bowing in prayer the whole congregation was surrounding us , i knew at that moment who i was going to need to get me through this ...would he be willing to listen to me...
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