The Journey

I haven't posted in a long time. I have lots of good excuses, but none of them really count because even before I had good reason I still didn't blog.

BUT I now have a GREAT reason to blog. My family is on a journey that I don't ever want to forget. Someone gave me a journal to write in, but I know I won't do it. Typing is so much easier and I can say so much more than I would handwriting. So I'm going to use this blog as my journaling through this journey. If you've chosen to join me, I thank you.

I'll start from the beginning, even though we are nearly a month into this journey. I might do recaps from time to time so that I don't forget some of the more important things that have happened over the last 27 days.

At the end of July my little princess, Jael, started to complain of headaches. We thought it was weird because she had never said a word about her head hurting and also she is only 3. What 3 year old has headaches? After 2-3 days of mildly complaining I called the doctor. The next day we went in for a check and turned out she had strep throat, which commonly causes headaches. Ok...so thats why. After a few days on antibiotics she will be fine. Day after day after day goes by and her headaches just keep getting worse. Truly it was torture. I told someone during all of this that it was like watching someone physically torture your child right in front of your eyes and you can't stop it! She would cry, I would cry. Mostly the headaches were bad at night and then she would be fairly normal during the day. Finally after a week of treating her for strep throat our doctor decided to admit her to the hospital for a CT scan, to watch her vitals, and then we would get an MRI the following day. I didn't know what was causing these headaches, but I never expected what I was told. "Jael has a mass on the back of her head." A tumor?? "Yes, a tumor." At that moment my world spun and spun. I had moments of truly feeling like I was in a bad dream and that I would wake up. She was sleeping when they told us and she looked so perfect. How could my perfect little girl have a brain tumor? NOOOOOOO! I wanted to scream. I wanted to take her up in my arms and get out of that hospital.

Of course we didn't. Our amazing pediatricians who came to personally tell us the news and stay with us, arranged for us to go to Arnold Palmer Hospital in Orlando for treatment. I went with Jael in the ambulance and Erik came behind us with his dad. As soon as we got to the hospital they wisked her away for her first MRI. I'll tell that story some other time. Then about 4 hours later the nuerosurgeon, Dr. Keyna Johnson, came in to tell us about our daughter's tumor. Our surgeon is wonderful!! She brought us out of the room and showed us a picture of the tumor (which I now have and will post a pic of this when I can figure out the software the MRI photos came with). We got good news. It was right on the outside of the brain. "Best possible place to have a brain tumor." Surgery was scheduled for the next day at 9 a.m.

Jael is back from the store...so will continue my story later. :-)