I wanted to share this

A couple of days before Coopers passing I stumbled across this blog. I want to share this one post because it touched my heart in so many ways. Caution it is a tearjerker…

A Walk In My Shoes

If you were to walk in my shoes, you would feel the joy upon hearing you were having a healthy little girl….the daughter you always dreamed of. You would be fearful as she arrived 6 weeks early, yet elated that she was here. You would enjoy the silence in the middle of the night as you held her and realized what a miracle you had been blessed with.

You would feel the panic begin as what you had hoped was only a virus brought you to the hospital. You would have to sit in fear while you waited for answers. You would feel the world fall out from under you as you heard the words “your daughter has cancer”.

If you were to walk in my shoes, you would pray that your daughter would beat the 30% odds she had at survival….and that she would then beat the 80-90% odds of recurrence.

You would shake as you handed her over to the surgeon in the pre-op room, kissing her goodbye, and praying she would never remember what she was to undergo. Not once, but multiple times. You would pray for the skilled hands of the surgeon and his team, and sweat in an overcrowded waiting room counting the hours as you watched others come and go.

If you walked in my shoes you would sign consent forms that you no longer read because you had signed so many, it no longer mattered. These were the only procedures that would keep you moving forward in your battle. Life was now counted hour by hour.

If you walked in my shoes you wouldn’t just sing lullabies to your child in a rocking chair. You would sing them while she was having a CT scan done in hopes of drowning out the noise, keeping her still, and trying to make her feel safe just hearing your voice.

If you walked in my shoes you would learn how to manoeuvre an IV pole in one hand and your child in the other. You would be proficient with medical terminology and watch as your child was pumped full of poison because this was her only hope at survival. You would become a master at keeping track of blood counts.

You would have to hold your baby as she vomited mucus and bile for days on end…..trying to balance her and change the bed for the third time that day. You would kiss her head and get a nose full of her hair, and have your lips burn because the chemotherapy was releasing from her pores. You would learn to wear gloves when dealing with any of her fluids because they were toxic.

If you walked in my shoes, you would live in a hospital for months at a time, where there is no privacy, sleeping on a worn out couch, and awoken every 4 hours. You would face the wall and cry in silence…wishing it would all be a bad dream. You would look outside the window and realize that life was going on outside of your room, but you weren’t sure how to be a part of it anymore. Your life hung on the edge within four walls.

If you walked in my shoes, you would be ecstatic to be able to take your child home, even just for a few days to try and remember what it was like to have baby in the house. Yet you’d be afraid that a fever would send you running back at lightning speed. You will have become trained with a stethoscope, thermometer, and syringes and have turned your house into a pharmacy and be happy to do so just to have her home. And you would then cry during the entire drive back to the hospital, wishing you never had to take her back.

If you walked in my shoes you would know what it was like to be locked in isolation as you sat with tears streaming down your face thinking that this was not what childhood was supposed to be about….and all the time your baby smiled at you as if to say “it’s okay mummy”.

If you walked in my shoes you would feel the panic as a “code blue” was called on your floor…and you sat and hoped it was no one you knew, and prayed selfishly that it would never be you. You would feel the fear grip you when you received the call at 1:30 am that a code blue had been called and your child had been rushed to the critical care unit. You would be that parent running through the hallway desperate to reach your daughter.

If you walked in my shoes you would see the panic and despair in the doctors’ eyes as they searched desperately for answers to give you as time ran out for your baby. You would feel the helplessness that you could do nothing to save your child, and pray that God would take you instead of them.

If you walked in my shoes you would have to make the horrific decision to take your child off of a ventilator, and then find the courage to utter the words “it’s time” to the doctor. You would have to hold your child as they took their last breath, then say goodbye as you kiss them and hold their hand for the last time.

If you walked in my shoes you would have to find a way to tell your other children that their sister had died, while at the same time trying to put on a brave face and be present to support them as they did their best to understand and cope.

I pray that you never have to walk in my shoes….because only then, will you truly understand.

 

Thanks for reading

Cooper’s mom

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