What Could Have Been

We went to Arkansas Children's Hospital today. Bryan's son, Brendan, was diagnosed with angiocarcinoma a couple of years ago. He has bone cancer. We have been through Dr. visits and chemotherapy and waiting and waiting. The kids live with us now and so it is our responsibility to deal with all of this stuff. The times that I have visited ACH in the past I was just a girlfriend, and then a brand new wife...not a mom. It was easier in the past.

Brendan has been off of chemo for a year. The last visit was about 6 months ago and the results of the MRI were still the same. It was there but not growing, so we have still been worried. We watch him and he was limited in sports and play. He used to be really angry that he had cancer. Of course soon after he was diagnosed his parents divorced and he felt like he was the reason, that cancer was the reason his Mom and Dad split up. We have worked out the issues within him and he is well adjusted and understands things better now.

Today was surreal. Next Monday I would have been in Little Rock seeing a neonatologist and seeing if Zoe Jane was viable enough to be delivered. As I walked through ACH today, I noticed things that I had not noticed before. The kids, the parents, the nurses. I noticed the IVs, the casts, the wheelchairs. We were sitting in a waiting room to MRI and they wheeled an infant in that was hooked up to a hundred tubes. I couldn't help but think that would have been my Zoe in a few days. The parents looked tired. The kids were physically drained. I could see the strain in the faces of people who had been there a long time.

Bryan kept looking at me. I was thinking about her all day long. She could have been here soon. And in THAT hospital. I am torn because I would do anything to have her here, but I wouldn't want her to suffer. I wouldn't want to be one of those parents that was walking around with stress and worry. But I would have done anything to keep her alive and to see her breathing on her own.

We were at the hospital for six and a half hours. I watched Brendan lay so perfectly still for x-rays, for an IV, for injections, for an MRI and bone scan. He was so brave. Bryan asked me if I thought that Zoe would have looked a little like Brendan and had his demeanor. I told him that I thought so. She would have been a brave little girl. She had that look about her.