Thoughts and Prayers and FateShare
Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 11:06am | Edit Note | Delete
Time to purge my thoughts , i've wanted to do this for several days now but everytime i do something else happens to add to the note ... read it only if you wish i just need to cleanse ...first off i wanted to say just how honoured we were last week to be a part of the Cops for Cancer events. Thank you for your donations and contributions for our bottle drive we raised a couple hundred bucks... not bad!!!! On Wednesday night after a week of compiling and editting my speech i handed it over to Darcy who assured me he would read it word for word .Of course right from the get go in typical man brain he started ad libbing and adding his own "2 bits" worth ..this was quickly shot down when he caught a glimpse of my scowl piercing through him ...back on track...he recovered ....after all this was the point ...teamwork , right? right! Regardless there wasnt a dry eye in the room, they thanked us and told us how much this story will inspire there ride , really it was us that were so inspired and thankful, not that we will benefit from a cure or research(for ashley) but that they showed us how much people care. The church we attend hosted a dinner for them the next night and i know once again my girl had made an impression on them, she continues to teach.The next day we pulled our kids out of school for the morning and were front row at the Cops for Cancer opening ceremonies at the local high school , we were presented a lovely handmade quilt all folded and laid on our lap eerily like a family being presented a flag at a hero soldiers funeral. We were touched, the kids got teddy bears and ball caps it was truly beautiful,cathartic.The last couple weeks of fundraising and events had really taken it out of me , as much as i feel energized by contribuiting to these causes i am exhausted by the end of them i was looking forward to having a quiet weekend ...i don't mean llteral "quiet" that is impossible in this house especiailly during "marriage testing" kitchen renovations(lol), nonetheless. i had no plans , i woke up late on saturday morning, Britt had gone to the neighbours and the big girls crawled in bed with me to tell me about their dreams the night before and their plans for the weekend, i was lazing in my pjs until noon when the phone rang, Darcy answered it and what seemed strange was how fast the conversation was, how there didn't seem to be any words exchanged on the phone and as i saw him fly out the door all i heard was "BRITTANNY BROKE HER ARM ' somehow i went form pjs to half dressed and in the van with brittanny screaming her guts out and Darcy driving like something out of the Rockford Files. We were at ARH in no time and too short of a time from the last time we had been there, i didn't want to be back at this hospital this quick since feb 16 , i wasn't ready but i knew i had no choice. time to put those Big Girl pants on again and face the music. Brittanny was seen right away, most likely so they could give her something to tone down her blood curdling screaming. i was panicked, the medical staff probably thought " oh over emotional mom" yes i was but not for the reasons they thought.As we waited for xrays my nurse, i should say ashleys nurse , shows up to see how were doing , the reason i call her "my" nurse is because i think on feb 16 th she was comforting a whole family not just ashley. i asked her what she was doing down in emerg and the tone in which she said " i needed a change , im not on ped's anymore " told me everything i needed to know. My sister and the girls familiarily took care of the house and chores and my friend sonya who works in the hospital pharmacy came to sit with us on her lunch break as she often did when ashleys was there.This was beginning to feel all to real again as we waited to hear whether the the dr thought we needed surgery. I think our nurse must have told the med staff who we were and that were weren't as crazy as we seem because they seemed to spend alot of time comforting us after that. The xrays came back ..no surgery ... the orthopedic surgeon showed me the pics of the 2 broken bones , i asked him "is that it , do we get to go home?" hes looking at me like...."isnt that enough" im singing and dancing for joy now , you mean no blindside? nothing beyond what we thought ? were not going to childrens? we get to leave TODAY ? like regular parents? no way!!!!after putting brittanny "out" and grossly reducing the fracture while she slept her arm set in a cast we got to go ...of course darcy calm as a cucumber "ssee i told ya" as we were getting ready to leave the trauma room a girl had been wheeled in she had been in a car accident not wearing a seatbelt , flew through the sunroof and had major bleeding and head injuries. As sonya and i could hear this we gasped and held our mouths shaken for what the parents will be going through.
Fate .... Monday evening we get a call form Brad , Sonya 's husband they are at Childrens Hosptial , their 15 year old daughter Sam (christys childhood friend) fell off her skateboard and has head injuries was air-lifterd to Childrens . i couldnt beileve it , how twisted fate can be. Sam's conditon is unknown at this point , showing some response ..awesome! been taken off the ventilator...awesome!..out of ICU.... awesome ! Still out of it and unsure of whats next but please keep Samantha , Sonya Brad and Kyle in your thoughts and prayers pray for a speedy recovery and comfort for all of them. Childrens hospital can be a scary place when you are facing the unknown . I talked to Sonya yesterday ,she sounds like she is staying postive and they are dealing with what they have to deal with...survival mode... , she tells me Sam is on 3r the ward next to ashleys , they even have one of Ashleys nurses who remembers her , Sonya tells me she thinks ashley was there with her,sams guardian angel that day, i belleive her because when i asked sonia what i could bring her ..toothbrush,toothpaste etc she told me that when she arrived completely unprepared at Childrens she was given a parent bag which contained the essentials parents would need to get by a couple nights should they find themselves at BCCH unexpectadly... i nearly started crying .. not sure if i told you back in May my girlfriend Patty started this initialtive with an other friend of hers who sells a cosmetic line to put together parent bags for parents at BCCH , she got this idea when she would visit me and see shell-lshocked moms wandering around with no "lady supplies" they ran the idea by the powers that be at BCCH and it was implemented ,we spent a night stuffing bags and they were later distrbuted. and my friend Sonya got one ...it takes many angels to be affected by someones circumstances and to see things come together. It has been a whirlwind week for us but nothing compared to the fear and anxiety another family is facing this week ...we pray for their peace
Peace,
lori
Britt is recovering fine and enjoying all the attention a cast can bring.
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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