Disclaimer: This chapter contains sensitive content, as some of the events that take place pertain to true events that occurred.
| P A I G E 16 |
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In my daughter's eyes
I am a hero
I am strong and wise
And I know no fear
But the truth is plain to see
She was sent to rescue me
I see who I want to be
In my daughter's eyes
--
Xylon.
It's been three years.
Three years.
It's been three years since I've held her in my arms, or heard her tell me how much she loves me, or kissed her little chipmunk cheeks. It's been three years since we've curled up on her bed watching back-to-back episodes of Punky Brewster on her tablet. Three years of all I've been feeling and what seems to be the only thing I've been living in.
Hell.
Pea's last days shined with how amazing my daughter is. How beautiful she is inside and out. How she was made of nothing but pure love. But within those days, I had also been watching her body slowly deteriorate. Her lungs were filling with blood and she was struggling to breathe. I prayed to God so many times that he would just take her quickly... Instead, for three days, I had been nothing more but a witness to my daughter, who was fighting hard for her life. She hadn't eaten or drunk anything in days and was vomiting all the time.
On December 20th, I sat down with her entire team. When her oncologist, Isabel Garcia, spoke, I saw the pure pain in her eyes. She had always been honest with me and fought alongside us the entire time. I knew this conversation wasn't going to end well. Isabel sat up, clasping her hands together, sympathy drowning in her eyes, boring into mine. "Her updated CT scan has shown large tumors that are growing and compressing her bronchial tubes and heart within the four weeks since her open chest surgery," she sighed.
"The MER is spreading like wildfire. At this point, we don't feel that her cancer is treatable anymore. It's just become resistant to all her treatment options... there's nothing more that we can do." Her nurse, Nicholle, gave input. That they had tried and done everything they could possibly do to save her. But according to them, there was nothing left and the plan would be to keep her as comfortable as possible because she was deteriorating rapidly. That tore me apart. Never in all the years that I've been breathing and that I brought her into this world did I ever imagine I would be preparing to spend my last days with her.
