The lab lady...a human spirit story
Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 10:38am | Edit Note | Delete
So i had to write this note , tell ya about a little story that happened yesterday,one of those weird little human spirit stories.
As you may know Ashley has been getting alot of her daily medical work done out here at the new Abbotsford hospital , she is rarely seen in the cancer part just the pediatric ward usually for bloodcounts and transfusions and pain management. The nurses have been just amazing , really going out of their way to accomodate us etc, however, it is not childrens hospital where everything is just done so routinely and automatically and efficiently that i rarely have to think. Out here i am a little more responsible for "following through" making sure the right people are checking the results etc and that requistions are written for what i think needs to be done.
Yesterday, we visited the out patient blood lab at the hospital for the first time. There were people from various walks of life with a sleugh, im sure, of different ailments. There were several people working the counter/ reception and when i explained what we needed done and where they could retrieve the requisiton they seemed a little confused and hurried and stressed , the blood was drawn with a bit of difficulty, yet we were still quite grateful we werent driving into Vancouver.
Later that day i still hadn't heard any results form the lab so i phoned in to get the results , i was transferred to about a million different people and asked questions like" well will you know what these blood results mean...its a little technical?' I would snicker to myslef thinking" wow if they could only see my blood bible over the last year!" So i proceeded to ask about the white blood cell count, the differentials the hemoglobin,platelletes etc. Finally they put me through to the supervisor when they realized i guess that i wasn't a rookie. The woman gets on the phone and asks who i'm inquiring about... i tell her "Ashley Lowey", she asks if were related to another Lowey family in Abbotsford and i tell her no but that we are asked this all the time, this starts a friendly little chat about nothing in particular, then she says oh i remember you this morning ... i try to recall in my mind which one she was but like i said it was a bit of a zoo. She gives me some of the results that i ask for and she says"out of curiosity what are these blood results for , theres quite a bit of bloodwork?" I tell her "oh she has germ cell tumor"...silence...no reply..so, i re-word it "metastatic cancer " i tell her, the only sound i hear is the chicken stir frying on the stove 2 steps away and Brittanny asking me to tie her dolly's shoe....still nothing but quiet on the phone"did she hear me" i wondered, had i been disconnected i thought Now i've been at this a year or so when i say cancer or germ cell tumor i probably say it with a tone you would use to describe "the flu" not that i am un- compassionate any more about the diagnosis just that when im dealing with the science or scientists of the disease i have learned to be a little more academic and advocatory with it so i can process and plan and anticipate whats next. Anyways, i repeat myself again because of the long pause" metastatic cancer" i say....again..pause , a long one. I say" heeelllloooo", and she gasps and says "im sorry ...im going to cry" ...."what" i thought..."huh" i say in my most compssionate voice possible....she sobs and says " i saw her today she so young and beautiful" she cries and apologizes over and over , i tell her Im sorry" ( i dont know why i said im sorry but i felt so bad for her) i tell her" its ok , it s ok , i know i know , dont be sorry" i said through held back tears and chokedness. She blurts out the numbers i had phoned for but she is strained vocalizing the results. The numbers wouldnt have meant much to her so this was all coming from the news of the cancer itself. I told her" thank you" and "its ok" one more time. She says shes sorry and hangs up the phone. Many things rattled through my mind at the time, i was moved to tears at this point and the "mom" in me came back at the empathy and humanness that this disease has brought out in people. It is a testament to the human spirt , this woman works in the area of science has to deal with a lot of disease and sick people but can still be moved to tears by the sight or recall of a moment in her day where things didnt seem fair and that we are all connected and we all have a story , i dont know what her story was, maybe she lost someone to cancer, maybe she has a 16 year old daughter maybe she hadnt given us much thought at the time,maybe she thought Ashley was anorexic, i don't know , but it was that "kindness of strangers" thing again. We have been shown so much compassion, love and support by so many of you, not surprising though, because i know i can count on that from you, i guess we've chosen our friends wisely or lucked out by having you choose us but were thankful either way and realize that this effects everyone. So to the lab lady if she ever reads this or if you know of a lab worker at ARH please let her know that she should never be sorry for her comapssion and humanness in her job or otherwise , it really stopped me in my tracks and made me aware of how much we are all connected if we stop and look. I know ashleys medical team as scientific and professioanall as they are must go home some nights pour themselves something strong and wonder and cry and question.... the lab lady confirmed that for me yesterday. Thanks for reading.
Peace,
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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