Four years ago today, I heard the words "there is a lesion on Colleen's femur". I was alone with Colleen at Triangle Orthopedics. This was our second or third visit. Colleen had been complaining of knee pain for a couple of months. She was a year round swimmer and she was still swimming every day but in the evening the pain had gotten so bad...
As the Pediatric Cancer Editorial Advisor for Touched by Cancer Magazine , I have been asked to write a column about the positive things that can come out of a cancer diagnosis. Don't get me wrong, I can come up with content for this article all on my own. Although our daughter, Colleen lost her battler, cancer has profoundly and positively...
To most people who look at this picture, it seems like just a simple chair. However, I looked at this picture and immediately burst into tears. That doesn’t happen to me very often, especially in public. But this night was different; this picture had reached back and invoked a memory that I had not thought of that vividly in almost...
I went to the DMV today to renew my driver's license. The last time it was renewed was in May 2006, a lifetime ago. When I had two living children, when I had a job at Sony Ericsson, when I had a completely different perspective on the world, when I had hair. The man behind the camera looked at my old license picture and said "what happened...
I am honored to be a member of the Editorial Advisory Board and to write the bimonthly Pediatric Cancer column for the new magazine, Touched by Cancer. Touched by Cancer is a free, bimonthly publication focused on helping anyone who has been touched by cancer and is being treated in central North Carolina. Their goal is to be a unique...
I just finished watching A Lion in the House . It is a documentary that was released in 2006 and is both an Emmy Award and a Sundance Film festival standout. It focuses on five families who each have a child battling some form of childhood cancer. The filmmakers (Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert) also fought the disease with their own...
I took the day off today and spent it with Ashli. When I went to her house to pick her up, some of Kyleigh's classwork was out on the table. Baileywick has started sending it home since it is the end of the year. Ashli shared one of the stories with me. In September, Kyleigh wrote the following story. I asked if I could share it on the blog...