another year passes.

In 2012 we went to scare on the square.

I was excited that all the girls were dressed in their super hero costumes, but reese was still so sick. She had been to the ER, they said she had UTIs, I was not very content in that answer, but I am not a doctor, so I guess I was wrong. She slept all the time. I barely got her awake to put on her costume. Her right arm ("bad arm") had been not working for months. Doctors sort of gave us lame answers - like saying she broke it (even had an x-ray!) and putting it in a cast. Maybe radial nerve? Maybe should get an MRI? but she had been throwing up so much that we could never get her sedated. I find it ridiculous that none of these things added up for any medical professional, but it wasn't in our time - it was in someone else's hands.

Downtown, I know now, that people saw her eyes act strangely, then, but didn't know how to tell me. It doesn't matter, of course, because when EJ saw her eye float later, they went to the ER... again... to finally get a CT scan.

Thus began the worst days of my life.

Everyone stepped up: friends, family, strangers. We were instantly surrounded by doctors and nurses and sanitizer and fear, but also by love and prayers and warmth from all over the world.

When we got there, she was actively dying in a way... as she had been for days. Her heart rate was somewhere in the 30's and 40's. She was barely responsive. The fluid in her brain was so much, but even that day she would have times of totally "okay", so as a parent it seemed insane to think it was so bad inside.

...but now we are 4 years later.

She had to get another haircut the other day bc it was getting so long and needed to be evened out. This year, the girls were "decades" and we went to scare on the square to dance the night away with our very best friends.

We are oddly in a same type of waiting space as we have been before. Only, this time, instead of wondering what we are working with, if she will need more surgery, asking naive questions about chemo, checking to see if her body will handle her own pituitary functions... we are just waiting on a new medicine to be (hopefully!) approved while we go to dance, have dress up days at school, laugh at the dinner table, cuddle at nighttime.

4 years is a lifetime. I look back on what we've done in 4 years and am so grateful to have so many friends be by our side along the way. Here's to many more halloweens filled with dancing and laughter and love.