Family Ties

We have had a pretty mellow couple of weeks. Well, it's never really mellow around our house, but at least we have been injury free and all of our eyes are working just fine. :) It's funny though because Brooklyn just said yesterday, "Mommy, my eyes aren't blurry anymore." I'm pretty sure they've been fine for awhile but maybe she just thought of putting the ointment in and how it would make them blurry for awhile. It is strange how Brooklyn's treatment has become such a normal part of our everyday lives. Someone just asked me yesterday if Brooklyn's treatment is pretty similar for the remainder of her schedule. I said yes, and just rattled off that we give her chemo pills at home every night, she gets chemo through her port once a month and spinal taps every three months. She kind of laughed and said something about how it was just so automatic for me explaining it, but that for anyone else, hearing all she has to do, is a lot. It made me stop to think and if you would've told me a year and a half ago the list of treatment that has become so normal for us now, I would've hyperventilated. In fact, I was just looking back through a prayer journal that I had and it was from October of 2010, when Brookie was having fevers and getting sick so often and I was praying for her blood tests and that her pediatrician would figure out what was going on with her. I was of course worried that it could be something bad, and was hoping that it wouldn't be. I do think that God heard my prayers and in a way blessed us with Brooklyn getting the type of cancer that she has. The fact that the cure rate is so high for ALL and that we have such a normal life even though she is fighting such a serious disease is really amazing. I don't know if I'm ready to say that I'm thankful that she got Leukemia, but I'm thankful for the way He continues to help us through it. It is such a normal part of our lives now that I have noticed how it has affected our kids in the last couple weeks. Kelsey loves to take the thermometer off the counter and go check Brookie's temperature, and she will always point at Brooklyn's medley of medicine bottles and say she wants medicine too. Then last week, I was listening to Kayla and Brooklyn as they were playing "pretend" together. They were most likely playing "mom and sister" where one of them is the mom and the other is the daughter, or they are both sisters, which always seems so funny to me because they really are sisters, but somehow it is more fun to play "pretend sisters." It's even funnier when I am the "pretend mom." I always think, will they clean up their room if I tell them to as the "pretend mom"? Anyway, Kayla said, "Brookie, pretend you have to go somewhere." And Brooklyn said, "Okay, I have to go to surgery." Kayla replied, "No Brookie, you really DO have to have surgery and you really DO have cancer, so pretend something else." I wanted to cry. Then Mike just told me the other day that when he was talking to Brooklyn, he said, "It's pretty cool that you have a special necklace isn't it Brookie?" (we used to call her broviak tubes her 'special necklace', so we still refer to her port as her special necklace sometimes.) She said, "yea, 'cause not a lot of kids have cancer." Then, about a month ago, our kids were playing with some kids we didn't know very well and one of them said something about how Brookie's hair was so short it looked like a boy's. Braden was so upset about it but he didn't want to say anything because he didn't want her to hear what they had said. I know that our family will grow and become stronger because of how Brooklyn's cancer has affected us all and I hope that my kids will be more sensitive to others with diseases or disabilities because of this time in our lives. I know I am learning more, through them, every day.