To be brave...
At the young age of 14, our oldest daughter was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Glioblastoma is not a cancer with stages. It is only stage four; that's how deadly and impossible it is to heal from. When the pediatric oncologist sat herself onto Kate's hospital bed to share the awful news, Kate simply and stone-faced asked if she was going to die. "Do nothing and yes, you will." Kate's diagnosis and she shed no tears. Whereas I had minutes ago been sobbing into my husbands chest wishing I could die instead. Kate was fortunate(?) to live two and a half more years. Two and a half years without hair, without pursuing her dreams, without...a lot. She bravely and boldly walked into the high school any chance her body would allow wholly different and beyond recognition from the girl she once was. Two and a half years after diagnosis on a chilly November 21st, I read the MRI report minutes before we were to meet with her oncologist. The report was damning. Seated n...