“A nerve injury in her small intestine has caused quite the turmoil in her little body. Every day she complains that her belly hurts. Every day she retches and throws up. This has become our normal. Foster care is hard. Medical needs are hard. But I’m here to tell you that these kids are worth every single sleepless night.”
“Ladies, there are amazing men in this world. Stop putting up with the B.S. and find a partner who loves and respects you.”
“At her 6-month checkup, the pediatrician casually asked, ‘Does she switch toys back and forth between both hands?’ When I answered no, she said, ‘Oh no. This really isn’t normal.’ In the center of her brain was a burst vessel. This was both shocking and devastating. We were done waiting for her to ‘discover’ her arm. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This was not in my plans, at all.”
“She tries so hard not rely on anyone else. You guys left there without knowing what an impact this has made on her life. She’s prayed for a blessing like this to come her way.”
“If I want to scurry around every morning, freaking out about forgetting to move the darn elf the night before, and panicking that I’m going to get caught by my 7-year-old while trying to place him in a new spot…that’s my choice. If I want to sing ‘Baby it’s Cold Outside’ while sipping egg nog in front of the fire, next to my handsy husband… don’t be concerned for me.”
“I’d carried her 9 months and soon doctors would be taking her away from me to save her life. ‘When can I see my baby?’ I asked the nurse. ‘Not yet.’ I was finally able to gaze at her through a plastic incubator. There were wires all over her new skin and into her tiny little nose, tape securing them down. But nothing could ever steal away what she was. Beautiful.”
“He had recently started taking gummy vitamins and drinking 2-3 glassed of milk each day so he could ‘buff up his bones.’ In that conversation he mentioned the ‘pass out challenge,’ but he did not elaborate, and with much regret, neither did I.”
“We were given the news that chemo would cause us infertility. Always being the patient, I’d never known what it meant to be on the other side of it. To watch your loved one suffer and feel so completely helpless your insides were miserably aching. But that was all about to change. How did this happen? What about all our plans and the family we were going to have? I was headed down the road to be a widow before we even had a chance to experience marriage.”
“Two ladies were standing in the doorway. I questioned how they found out. My father was going to be so angry. I screamed, ‘Where are you taking my sister?!’ Why were they doing this? She was all I had.”
“The full-time job, cooking dinner, bathing kids, weekend trips without him, keeping up a home. You name it, I was resenting it. Then this happened.”
