A Rough Day For This Momma (Day +82)

Yesterday, I got up at 6am, and drove to a bread plant. You see, Doerenbecher Children's Hospital Foundation was having a fundraiser. We got 1 hour and 45 minutes to roll out, cut and cook 10lbs of sugar cookie dough. This is my fourth or fifth year attending this event, and it touched my heart deeply.

The previous day, I had heard about a girl up at Doerenbecher who lost her battle with her illness. She was a very sweet young girl, around Alex's age. The news hit me harder than I thought it would, and I ended up having horrible nightmares about Alex succumbing to cancer. It was awful. I think I only ended up sleeping about three hours. This intense sadness wrapped around me, and shook me to my core.

While driving to the Doerenbecher cookie bake, I was listening to the radio. Susan, who is one of the Child-life specialists up at the hospital, was on the radio, talking about another Doerenbecher fundraiser. Hearing her familiar voice flood the inside of my car, had me bursting into tears.

Once I got to the actual event, I looked around at all of the people, and had to choke back tears again. Last year was Alex's first time at the cookie bake. He was done with cancer, having taken his last chemo pill only a few days earlier. We had a blast.

This year, it was just me.

Alex couldn't join me, since he is still on medications that keep him immune system suppressed. He woke up in time to see me leave for the cookie bake, and his sad face at the window was just one more point of sorrow for me.

I decided to only do 5 lbs of dough there, and came home with the rest of the dough to cook with Alex and Tessa. While I was decorating the cookies, Alex looked at me and said "It's ok, I'll go next year - and if my cancer comes back, and I can't go, we'll fight it off again!"

I smiled to hide the tears, kissed his head and held him tight.