In the momentShare
Friday, August 22, 2008 at 10:50am | Edit Note | Delete
So last friday we were in clinic and the Dr. tells us that he will be finding out MOnday whether or not they wil go ahead and do that experimental procedure on Ashley...(for those of you following along it was cancelled midstream last month which caused alot of anxiety around here for several days.) Ok so the very worst part besides the obvious in this whole journey is waiting for a test rsult or waiting to find out what they will do next...its like waiting on the pregnacy pee stick X 1,000,000,,000. They always seem to make you wait over a weekend, my aunt was with me,the conversation between the two of them (she and the doc.) turned quickly to the medal standings in the olympics,( i thought to myself "there's an olympics going on???) Allright , ihave to find a way to cope i thought , i can't make myself go through a torcherous weekend again withut freakin out. I got home and phoned darcy ..".lets go camping if only for a night ..lets go" after he hummed and hawwed about the work that lie before hime he agreed. Sat am we loaded up Darcy went ahead to set up and i took the girls to their cousins bday party before we took off. We made it up there in record time ..no arguing beteween the kids this time they jsut played and hung out ...Darcy and i enjoyed a cold beverage of hopps and Barley. We thought about what kinda fun camping dinner we should make ....we ended up at the Harrison Hotel for dinner...buffet..we ususlly like to treat the girls to it every year , its nice to look over the lake and eat dinner together. After we ate our weight in smorg we headed for the beach , it was such a beautiful night we just sat and watched the kids play as the sun was started to move behind the mountains, it was so peaceful. ..life was good this very moment thats all that mattered .We eventually made our way back to the site , the girls curled up and watched a movie and off to a half assed good sleep..well kinda there was a golf tournament wrap up party going on ..were so old we couln't believe how loud the music was????
Monday comes along and im sitiing on pins and needles..more like nails and spears. So Darcy comes with me to get the big news and of course its not even our Dr. and they don't have any info for us...ok you can imagine the nasty thoughts going through my mind...Hope YOU ahd a good weekend...hIOPE you didn't loose any sleep, hope you had a realaxing weekend watching the olympics.I sent Darcy back to work and Ashley and i had to wait for a perscription, we waited a little longer because i wanted to meet one of the oncology mom's. I had been reading her blog and she was such an inspiration on how to live in the moment ...her blog motto is "Life is not waiting for the storm to pass its learning to dance in the rain" I appraoched her as she walked into the clinic i knew it was her before i even asked her name . I burst out into tears as we began to discuss our journeys, she has been dealing with this for 3 years(Her 11 yr old daughter has brain caner) by the end of the conversation we were laughing at thought of writing a book about not just the journey of cancer but all the unbelivabilities of the journey ...the people you thought would be there for you and weren't and the strangers who took over for them... the chores we should hire out...dinners made ..dog walking ...plant watering ...eye contact...check ins ...satisfying my husband..etc.. etc...I'm so glad i met her and as i was leaving my dr. was running down the hall (do you think i let him continue running ....no) he knew he was trapped but as he ran past us he says" got you some dates its a go...i'll talk to you later) Wow fate ...wierd... i wanted to meet this woman(Jen) and because iwaited for her i was able to be comforted by her story her attitiude and the news from our Dr. I left feeling a sense of peace again..Thank you God for sending in an angel of comfort again... Sometimes when you pray and youre asking for something the thing that youre asking for doesn't always manifest i.e."Oh God please make Ahsleys cancer go away today" but he will send an angel in the flesh to offer comfort or humour, or peace and today was one of those days. Many of the times its my sisters, Darcy, my kids , my aunt, friends , church,work mates but some of the times its a complete stranger. Thanks to you all and you know who are.
Peace,
Lori (pics to follow soon)
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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