“We sat on her porch in the sun – and my phone rang. It was my husband. I answered, but something was different. He was panicked. That wasn’t like him. When I got there, I saw it. A work boot. Cut open, stained with blood.”
‘At this point, even if we get him back, his brain…,’ the doctor trailed off. I pulled his mom into me to hide her from this. ‘I won’t tell you to stop,’ I told the doctor. ‘I won’t ever tell you to stop.’
‘Thinking she had the flu, we took our little girl to the hospital. She was minutes away from dying. ‘She won’t make it through the night,’ the doctor said. She turned to me. ‘Mom, I can do this!’
“We told the doctor, ‘Do anything you have to in order to save our baby girl!’ The infection spread throughout her tiny body. She is a competitive dancer and her passion is being on the stage. ‘Mom, I am going to dance again!’ She woke up in a coma with her entire body wrapped in white gauze.”
‘Just stay down there, I’ll step over you’. A flippant comment by one of the mothers at swim lessons. I was trying to get to the pool on my bottom, guiding my son. I let her by, but it pushed me further into darkness.’
“I had an accident on a trampoline and broke my leg. Initially I saw it as a small set back and would be back in no time. I’d just gotten married 10 weeks before. The plan was to have children soon, so I wanted to recover as quickly as I could. Unfortunately, that was not the case.”
