I know how Kate died…mostly. I know that in 26 days, leukemia had absolutely taken over her little body and that her white blood cell count was astoundingly high.
I know that it would have taken a pretty decent miracle for her to have recovered from that, even if she had been able to beat the infection that caused everything to shut down. I know that treatment for relapsed leukemia is REALLY hard; way harder than the initial 2 years she had. We would have been sent off to another hospital, far from home, to live in the hospital for a bone marrow transplant at some point and we would have been isolated from just about everyone – literally. Family, friends, school…it would have likely been years before she returned to “life.” If she made it through.
I also know that Kate’s story is really rare. To have this disease come back and take over in the time it did and to have her body literally just turn against her is not something that “happens.” The team at our clinic is floored. The team on the PICU is, too. I’m not yet sure if this is more or less comforting, but I know it was as shocking to them as it appeared – they were not faking that.
What I don’t know is why.
WHY did God choose my baby to relapse? Why did He then have to take her after giving us such a blessing of her finishing treatment just four months before? Why give that joy then take it away? Completely. Forever? Didn’t He know that she had great things to do? Didn’t He know how this would destroy us? How we would cry until our eyes ache and burn? Did we do something so wrong in life that we deserved this? Why are there terrible, horrible people out there free to roam this Earth and yet my innocent, beautiful soul of a child has to be taken at four years…seven months…and seven days old?
I know it would have taken a fairly decent miracle for her to have recovered if God had not chosen to take her. But I know her birth, her life, her entire existence WAS a miracle. She was my miracle and there are no words to express how I feel without her.
She is a miracle <3