I was really considering ditching the whole blog thing.  Reading comment after comment from readers meant so much to me and it stood good chances of changing my mind.

I won’t lie, I felt like a bit of a crybaby for all the complaining I did.  It’s ok, you can say it.  I did.  Someone call a wahhhmbulence because I was obviously having a crisis.

And just about the time it seemed like I had issues, the world came crashing down.

We had gotten dressed and ready for Nathaniel’s soccer camp that there was a screw up around.  For me that meant A LOT of screw up.  Peter had worked so hard to cover all the bases and there were screw ups.

It was a mess.

When it felt like a REALLY bad day, I got a text message.

A friend had lost her son to the brain tumors they could never get rid of.

Her child. Gone.

Her little boy with the goofy grin and wonderful hug was forever gone.

And I couldn’t even go to his mother’s side to tell her how much he meant to me.  I couldn’t share with his step-dad how he used to crack me up.  I can’t be there to say goodbye at his service.

I have never resented how much these strokes have limited me more than this.

Justen, I miss you.

You made the world a better place.

“Is there anything wrong, mama?”

My six-year-old will ask while she lays her head of soft brown locks on my chest.  She wraps her little arms as far as they will go to offer comfort on those days when I feel less than whole.  Maybe no one knows the way she does…not even her yet.

It’s there some days.  That tendency to have a pity party and feel sorry for myself.  Some days I just get fed up because I feel like we’ve been through too much.  Isn’t it enough?  How much more can we take?  Can it be someone else’s turn to be strong and inspiring for once?

We had to do a stroke.  We had to pull it together and do pediatric cancer. We had to do eighteen months apart. We had two more strokes.  A coma.  Rehab. And this body that takes a lot of work.

We have had enough.

We really have.

And if not WE have had enough, I have had enough.

I’m tired of always struggling.  I’m tired of always fighting. I’m tired of always being the one to make choices that are strong.

Then my daughter puts her soft arms around me.  Arms full of life and expectation.  She’s expecting that I’ll never give up.  She never did.  She’s expecting my fighting spirit.  The one I told her she was full of every time they did something painful to her.  She expects that I’ll be just as strong as she was and just as much of a fighter.

For that girl who had cancer at two-years-old and fought it for years, I can fight too.

Never letting her down.

It’s been a year.

A year since I handed Peyton her last dose of chemotherapy medicine and she downed it like a champ.

A year since the clock started ticking….the one that counts off the days to five years.

She’s finally gotten to the age where she’s got more days off-chemo than on-chemo in her lifetime.  It was a bitter imbalance there for a while.

For four years and 364 days we say Peyton’s “off-treatment”.

Then with a flurry of fairy dust and magical unicorns, she wakes up on that five year mark and she’s “cured”.

THEN we can SAY she’s cured.  Of cancer.

But today when I got those numbers in my hand and saw how good they are, I couldn’t stop myself from dancing in my heart that for another two months she’s cured in my mind.

Year one down, baby girl.

Just four more to go.

In the days before Peter took the job that brought us to Georgia, we drove north to check out the hospital. We couldn’t even consider moving until we felt safe in our choice that SHOULD we need a hospital for treatment again, Peyton would have the best options available.

We got a grand tour of the hospital and the oncology clinic and we left feeling confident and happy with our available choices. In our time here, I’ve been thrilled with the doctors and hospital.

So, when I got the email on behalf of the Aflac Cancer Center at Children’s Hospital of Atlanta asking if I’d like to become a dedicated blogger for the hospital, I jumped on it. YES! I want to do this…I was feeling very disconnected from all our many “causes” we’d left behind in Fl…the charities, the cancer family interaction, the hospital. We were very involved in the community and it was as if we’d stopped cold turkey.

I didn’t quite know what to do with myself.

September was hard for me, as Childhood Cancer awareness month, and I didn’t have MY regular list of charities and events to be a part of anymore. I struggled to blog about it and to find new ways to raise the profile on pediatric cancers.

Then this opportunity came to get behind a cause I can rally around…our hospital…our new safe place here in ATL.

Tuesday I went up to the hospital to tour the facility.

Let me just say there’s a big difference in the tour you get as a potential incoming parent with a diagnosed child and the one you get when you come in as Aflac’s guest.

Listening to the explanations and information about the hospital that’s given to those who haven’t been neck-deep in the cancer world was an eye-opener. How you can talk about it, discuss it, know all the facts and never truly crack deep into what the hospital does for people.

I suppose that’s where people like me come in. I’m willing to throw it all out there, bleed my emotions all over the keyboard so people will possibly understand a teeny iota deeper.

Because, until you’ve lived your life behind the doors of the hospital, you don’t know. The nurses don’t know. The doctors don’t know. The board of directors sure as heck don’t know.

And I hope they never do.

Friday I went back to the hospital, not as a blogger, but as a parent…taking Peyton in to get her head CT.

I did something I haven’t done in a long time.

I got frustrated and angry and cried because they were hurting my baby girl. Failed attempts to get an IV started left Peyton a sobbing mess and me not far behind her.

In front of Rachael.

Stellar!

Watching their failure to get the IV going while Peyton fought and screamed took me back to all the years of holding her down for whatever procedure needed to be done…the years of whispering into her sweaty hair that I was sorry and that it would be done soon…having to be a part of causing my child pain.

I wanted to grab my kids and RUN, not walk, out of there.

But at the end of the day, when the tests were done and we were walking out of the hospital…Peyton with a new stuffed elephant, a balloon and a big smile on her face, I realized that at no point in the day did I doubt their ability to get the job done.

And to me, there is nothing more important than that.

The nicest decor, the prettiest hospital, the most exciting big name technology cannot ever compete with building the TRUST it takes to hand your child to a stranger and know that they’re going to give their best.

THAT is why we picked CHOA as our hospital…because there is no “pretty good” when your child’s life is on the line….there is only the “very best you can provide”.

Nothing else will do.

**No answers on the CT results yet, but since the doctors haven’t called yet, I assume that means nothing popped out as obviously wrong**