Many Blessings

As some of you know so many things had to happen in order for Brian and I to meet. I had been looking at colleges out of state and decided to stay in-state due to the cost of tuition. I went to work at the Factory right out of high school and met Jen a couple years later. She was dating Brian's brother Mike and we were all going to college together. I had told her that if she ever needed a ride to see Mike in Dallas (NC not Texas!) over the summer break that I would take her. Lo and behold, not a week later Brian wrecked his motorcycle and I drove her over there. Her poor car wouldn't make it...we used to call it the Singer because it sounded like an out of whack sewing machine! This was the first time Brian and I met. We got along great. Only problem was, he was engaged to someone else at the time. Brian knew he was in the wrong relationship before we even met but didn't know how to get out. I gave him two weeks (We talked in that two weeks but that was it.), after that I wasn't waiting. If he wasn't going to leave her in that two weeks then we didn't need to be together. Two weeks to the day he broke it off. Four months after we started dating we were engaged, six months later we were married, four months later we were pregnant with Ava. Yeah, we've been told we were moving too fast. Honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. We have had a lot of things go wrong over the years but never our relationship. We laugh, cry, work through problems and get along better than a lot of couples I know. In a three year time span we started dating, got married, and had two of our three daughters.
Ava and Ella had been the picture of perfect health from birth. Ava's biggest illness didn't come until she was almost three and they thought she was going into kidney failure. Turned out it was a combination of many things and her kidneys have functioned fine since. We have to watch her sugar intake and dairy intake from time to time but I'll take it! Ella's biggest illness was at three months old when she had whooping cough. For six months we got to hear that horrible cough and she had to sleep elevated. We went through three swings in that time and had quite a time getting her transitioned back to her crib at nine months old.
Then came Ivy lol. This little one was our troublemaker from the beginning! I was sick the entire pregnancy, had heart burn the whole time, and had gestational diabetes quite a bit worse than with Ella. All of her ultrasounds looked normal. Then her birth...well that took quite a bit longer than any of us thought but I won't complain, I went through much longer with Ava!
My sister found the lump on Ivy's backside first. Then she pointed it out to the nurses and suddenly we had doctors and nurses gathering around whispering and looking her over. Talk about scary. I was freaking out and going through shock from my epidural, no fun at all there. We were told that it was just a fluid filled sac and she should be seen by a neuro surgeon as soon as possible. A week and a half or so later we saw the neuro surgeon for a whopping 5 minutes. He took one look at it, said she needed an MRI at 6 months old and wouldn't answer any questions until then. He swore he had seen so many cysts like this and removed them all the time and it doesn't bother her. BALONEY!!!! My child screamed every time we changed a poopy diaper and any time she was in her swing, bouncy seat or car seat. She always slept on her side because sleeping on her back put too much pressure on her backside.
At her two month visit her pediatrician did not like how it looked, feeling it was becoming abscessed. So he had me take her to the Levine Children's Hospital ER immediately. I quickly picked up my other two, called my mom hysterical, and let Brian know he needed to come home (he was in Michigan). Five doctors later we see a doctor from the neuro surgeons office. She told me that there was nothing wrong and she could have an MRI the next week if I was that concerned about it. I insisted we do it right then, and for those of you who know me, I do not do confrontation well. I normally let things slide. But this time I felt that my pediatrician was on to something.
Long story short, I'm glad I insisted. It turns out she had not just the cyst on the outside but what they thought was a plum sized one on the inside pressing on her colon. It was actually several smaller ones on the inside. And then we found out that she has Sacrococcygeal Teratoma, which is a form of cancer. Thank the Lord we caught it in time, the one tumor that was malignant had the markings in the middle so they were able to get it all and only left a few "germ cells", as they called them, behind. Essentially that means that it could come back, but for now we are just closely monitoring her and she will only have to do chemotherapy if the tumors return. When I think back to the other neuro surgeon we saw at the ER I want to scream. What if I had waited until she was 6 months old like originally planned? What if I had not insisted on the MRI then? What if we had not had such a great pediatric surgeon who would not let us leave the hospital until he knew what was going on for sure and could give us an answer? God has been so good to us. If He had not been there with me to stand my ground then Ivy could have been facing chemotherapy at 6 or 7 months old when they decided to extract the tumors. That makes me sick to even think about! And I just want to give a big thank you to everyone who shared our statuses and prayed for us as we went through all of this. Ivy is a much happier baby now and hardly ever cries in her car seat anymore. I feel like the worst is now behind us!