How Do I Say This?

When you have something big to announce it can be fun to plan a big surprise if it's happy. But if it's bad news, you almost don't want to tell anyone because every time you say it, it becomes more real, it sinks in even more.

When we lost our first child, we made a general announcement on facebook after letting close family and friends know. But there were still people that we had to call because we knew they would want to know. I just couldn't make the phone calls, so my poor husband took the task. Every phone call was so hard.

Well, we have other big bad news. Our second daughter has neuroblastoma cancer and ataxia. It took about a month to officially diagnose from the first symptoms. It was a shock to hear the doctor say our daughter has cancer, but it was a little bit of a relief to finally know what the cause was, but still mostly a very depressing moment.

She's since had surgery to remove most of her tumor, and they'll be keeping a close eye on her to see if the remaining tumor grows again. We've also been treating her ataxia, helping her to walk better. She's at a point right now where her surgery wounds are healed enough, and her ataxia medication is working well enough that she's walking so fast. It's amazing to see her go from crawling because she couldn't walk anymore to almost running!

It has been really hard, but I've seen many people with worse problems. Every time I get too depressed, I hear about someone else's problems and I am thankful I'm not going through that trial. People fleeing from war and trying to make a new home as a refugee in another country, houses burning to the ground or being destroyed by earthquakes, deadly car accidents, and even people whose cancer is much more aggressive and advanced than our daughters.

If all goes well with our daughter, which the doctors are optimistic, then this could hopefully all be a bad memory. Not to say that there isn't a rough road ahead, because there still is much that needs to be done with our daughter, but the outlook is hopeful.

We don't know how strong we are until being strong is the only choice we have.