The Lowey Family is thanking you all for the support in 2008
Friday, January 2, 2009 at 12:26pm | Edit Note | Delete
I spent most of Jan1 in quiet contimplation( quiet in this house is rare) about how i will approach this year , my mind has been thrown around latley like a ragdoll in a tornado. But we made it through Christmas outside the hospital, Ashley was adament about not wanting to spend Dec 25 in the confines of an I.V pole, However, we were there the day before and the day after, doesn't matter.... we were home and after much turmoil about how we would spend the holidays...we went with traditonal, well almost traditonal ,vowing not to get hung up on the things that didn't matter the things i did out of duty and with little joy before. I should tell you that even though i decided not to bake this year, i was still blessed with a freezer full of yummy xmas goodies, much to my familys delight. as well we were blessed with special treats from secret santas and spirits of angles to get us through.
The day after my last blog on Dec.12 we were again brought into a conference room to discuss ashleys progress, our hope for this miracle last ditch chemo was not the news we had hoped , ashleys cancer which normally is a 90-99% curable cancer is proving to beat the statistics and we again were faced with some harsh realiities...choices that no parent should have to make, or perhaps choice and control were taken away along time ago?... i dont know..., however we now knew we had the choice on how we would deal with it.Christmas could have been big and splashy or quiet and uneventful ...we decided to go with normal... our normal xmas.... because outside of all the crap we still have to find a way to have a normal yet extraordinary life, truth is... not one of us really knows what tomorrow will bring, tomorrow is not promised.
So the purpose of my blog is to take this time to tell each and everyone of you what you have meant to us this year, i wish i had the time to tell you each personally the way you have touched our lives this year , i wish i had time to sit and write witty and inspirational thank you cards and i wish i had time to listen to whats new in your life, but our main priority right now is to care for ashley and our other children as best we can, a job we are honoured to do, one that has tested us as parents time and time again , the hardest and most priveleged part of out career as parents thus far. and as we travel it we are learning there is a difference between "Cure" and "Healing."Just before Christmas hit we spent many of the days consistently being reminded of our year long journey and how we thought we would be in remission by now,little did we know last year that we..i should say ashley would face weekly transfusions, hundred of pokes dozens of scans several surgeries and procedures , days and weeks of vomitting and infections and countless days in hospital ,everchanging news etc. apparently we are faced with a different plan for our lives, but we are here right now and we probably wouldnt have been without you.
We have met some amazing people on this journey , gotten to know some better , and relied on old friends as well. WE THANK YOU for errands, meals, money, fundraisers, cards, care packages, beautiful letters, blankets, jewlery, phonecalls, wine and more wine, visits, chores, taking care of our other kids, having them over , groceries, movies,shoulders to cry on, wisdom,prayers,banana bread, pies, casseroles,massages,school pick ups, annointment, oils, tears, laughter, hugs and more hugs, going bald , sponsorship, drawings, bday party dedications, moral support, concertst,compassion,scarves, dog napping, , spirit of angel xmas gifts, out of town visits. I know there is a ton more stuff im forgetting and i apologize please know that nothing in our house and home goes unnoticed we are truly blessed and give thanks everytime , many times we just cry over the overwhelming support and love shown to us it is an experience that i truly have no words for and i think that sometimes out of tragedy and sadness beautiful angels appear to lighten your load....Gods true purpose for our lives. I have prayed the obvious over and over again and have questioned why my prayers are not being answered?I know that i may never have answers to my questions no matter how many ways i read all the powerful stuff out there but i know that comfort is always being sent our way. Would i wish this upon anyone so they can experience this love ? not my worst enemy , i don't care how strong it apparently makes you ..id rather be weak and stupid and shallow if it means having my children healthy...but we dont always get to choose the circumstance we only get to choose how we will look at it, how we will approach it and for that we we are still working on it, reminding ashley that she may not be able to do all the things she once did right now that she will discover hidden talents inside herself that may not have exuded form her without this experience , it her journey to discover it i guess and ours to cheer her on every step of the way. There are hidden gifts for us too, ones i plan to continue to share with you over time in these writings which has truly been a cathartic experience , a bit vulnerable but very rewarding one i hope to reflect on with peace over time . In the meantime Ashley is recieving a drug to hopefully keep her tumor at bay , to stop growth, we are trying to keep her strong physically, spritually and mentally, she is an amazingly strong kid as is all of our kids... they walk along side her holding her hand (when she s not bossing them around...some things never change)
Again, from the Lowey family we thank you all ,so many of you including the medical team, fellow oncology parents for our shared fears and tears and hope , family, friends , neighbours, community,work ,we are blessed and and unbelievably thankful to you for holding us up through our walk along this journey.
May you experience peace and the love of others and the gift of each day regardless of what life brings you this year.
Peace
Lori(and family)
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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