Conquering Cancer with Cuteness

[Note: This is the first of several posts I hope to get done today in an attempt to catch up on everything we've done since October. I decided to split them up so you don't have to read the single longest post in the history of this blog. Wish me luck!]

[Note 2: I actually began this post a month ago, but never finished/posted it.]

I'm think I'm behind on everything in my life right now. I still don't understand how I seem to be busier now than I ever was while I was still in school. But alas, it is what it is. Maybe I'll catch up someday...but with a baby coming in about a month, probably not.

Anyway, that's not the point of this post. This post will have a more serious tone than my usual post. Because this post is about cancer.

Cancer is a disease that I don't understand. Of course, no one really does, or it wouldn't be such a big deal. Perhaps one day we'll know why the body's cells start growing out of control for no apparent reason. What we do know is that this is very bad and, without treatment, often leads to intolerable pain and death. How we all wish that we could find an easy way to cure this terrible disease.

Cancer has touched my life several times now. In fact, it first touched my life before I was even born. My paternal grandfather was diagnosed with and succumbed to an aggressive form of prostate cancer when my dad was in his early 20's. I didn't get to meet my dad's dad in this life. I know that even after more than 30 years, my dad still misses his dad. This same form of prostate cancer also took the life of my dad's youngest brother, my uncle, just over a year and a half ago. This too has been really hard on my dad.

As if those incidents weren't bad enough, cancer just doesn't seem to want to leave my family alone, because in May of this year, my beautiful, at the time 6-month-old niece N was diagnosed with Stage 3 Rhabdomyosarcoma. She had a large tumor in her abdominal area.

Thankfully, since the diagnosis, things have been looking pretty good for N. She went through many rounds of chemotherapy to halt the growth of and hopefully shrink the tumor before she had surgery in July. Since the surgery, she has continued to have chemotherapy and she also went to Texas to receive a special type of radiation therapy. Just in the past couple weeks she had another scan that indicated that all the cancerous cells had been removed. So she just has to complete her chemotherapy treatments (3-4 more months) and hopefully after that her cancer will officially be in remission. Chances are pretty good that she'll survive, although there may be long-term complications from the chemotherapy and the radiation.

At the end of October I went down to New Mexico to help out while N was in the hospital with an infection. The hardest part was that she had to be confined to her room since they didn't know exactly what her illness was and couldn't risk infecting other children in the unit. She was also tethered to an IV for much of the time, and when you have a 1 year old who just wants to crawl and walk everywhere, it's difficult to be attached to tubing, especially because I couldn't put her on the floor since it was dirty and potentially germ-filled.

However, N is just about the happiest, most content baby I've ever known, especially given her condition. She takes every procedure in stride, and all the doctors and nurses love her since she's usually really happy. Perhaps these pictures will help you see why:

 

I think it's safe to say that if you could conquer cancer with cuteness, little miss N is doing it.