i hope you dance.

oh my baby boogerton…

it breaks my heart to see you in pain these last few days. You – my giggly, happy-go-lucky cloud-gathering princess ballerina who lives in a world filled with puppies and rainbows – you spend most of your free time these past couple weeks hunched over on the couch.

the very first time you came up to me and showed me where and how you were hurting – my breath caught. Two years ago in the neurosurgeons office when we discovered the “tumor” on your spine via MRI while looking for a much bigger problem, he told me that if you were ever going to experience symptoms, you would feel them like *this* – swiping across his lower ribcage. And that is exactly how you came to me a few weeks ago. I hoped it was just a growing pain or a cramp or anything easily explainable that would resolve in a day or so. And it seemed like maybe it eased up. I told myself it was gone. But then it came back worse. And continued to get worse.

and you danced your heart out on that stage last weekend – three long days of dancing and booty-popping and fuete-ing across that stage. And even though you would come offstage with that pained look in your eyes, you put on your next costume and got right back at it. Because that’s just who you are. You love to dance, you live to dance. And I tried so very hard to ignore how much you were hurting. Because I didn’t want to think of what it might mean.

Because what it might mean is that this tumor is growing. And I’ve tried to explain it to you in the simplest, least scary terms I can. You have a small growth that is in the nerve pathways of your spine. It is a growth that is prone to rapid acceleration, even if it remains dormant for years. We had no way of knowing two years ago if it would ever grow, if it would shrink away, or if it would just remain there, in the way but not causing any problems for the rest of your life. We were supposed to get MRI’s every 6 months to monitor the growth. Which, we did keep up with pretty well until your little sister decided to live in the hospital last summer, and we missed an appointment and I thought “ok my hands are full enough of medical stuff and this will probably not ever be anything to worry about for K2”. And oh how i hope those words don’t come back to haunt me. They already have.

I know you are scared baby girl.

Tomorrow morning we will have that MRI so your doctor can get a good look at what is going on throughout the area, and more specifically see if that tumor is growing and causing issues.  We have talked about some of the possibilities and i’ve tried so hard to keep my own game face on for you.

You are not looking forward to tomorrow morning, and truthfully neither am i. You never do well with anesthesia and it makes you so sick for a couple days afterwards. What a crappy way to start spring break! But at least we will have it done, and your doctor can hopefully give us an all clear before we leave for Disney.

You are so brave my little boog. I will be brave for you, as they give you the medicine to make you sleepy and they wheel you away from me. I am used to this – as much as a mommy can get used to such a thing – for your sister. We have our routine. i hand her over to people who know her and who have my trust. Tomorrow I will hand you over to strangers. We will probably get to the hospital and get to talk to peds anesthesia minutes before your time and they will literally freak out over your sisters anesthesia history and they will realize that someone should have called me three days ago to discuss this craziness. And this will make you even more nervous so I have to remember to talk to them in the hallway.  But off you will go and I will sit and pray the whole time, willing them to find nothing, or maybe a little something that would explain the pain – but nothing really serious. No tumor growth.

Because I cannot think about that part. The part where if it IS this tumor and it IS growing and you have to have surgery, how that would affect you. It would mean no dance for a few weeks – during the busiest part of the season. It would devastate you. It would be very hard for me too. So I won’t think about that. We won’t think about that.  We will focus on positive things and easy answers and breathing a sigh of relief when we get the doctors report next week.  We will not think about you not being able to dance – you who dance and leap your way through the house, the walk to the bus, school, whatever store we are in.

You dance.

You dance anywhere and everywhere and you dance your heart out.

So tomorrow when you go to those crazy anesthesia induced dream places – I hope you dance. I hope you see yourself like I see you – my beautiful graceful amazing little dancer.

And when you wake up – I hope you dance too.

You are amazing and i am so proud of you and i love you so very much.

My baby boogerton – if you get the choice to sit it out or dance –

I hope you dance.

 

love,

mommy.