We woke up afraid, for we knew that this day we would learn our daughter Jes's diagnosis. Just one week ago she received ultrasound results were not comforting- that she has suspicious growths in her neck.
However, we spent the week inbetween the ultrasound news and the biopsy news plowing through 41 houses to look for our new home in Alabama. We did not find anything we loved 100% and left town. We left town without a new home, knowing that our daughter's diagnosis was soon coming. We'd kept ourselves busy for a week with 41 houses. Distracted. On a mission. Hell bent. Single minded. Focused.
We drove home on May 30th exhausted and slept, only to wake to May 31st.
Late in the morning Jes called. She had cancer.
But it was not "bad cancer." It was the best cancer one could hope to have, should one hope to have cancer. Thyroid cancer is easily treated with surgery and radiation that targets only thyroid cells. This, our daughter could beat. One summer of inconvenience and pain, and our daughter would survive like a trooper, unscathed except for a scar that would fade with time.
At the age of 25 our daughter was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer. We were all torn wet paper. Lifeless, exhausted, staring blank into the room, 1000 miles from her.
But our has daughter conquered several confrontations with death in her quarter century, and stared them each down. She dragged herself by her fingernails out of oncoming traffic in 2004 after being hit by a car while biking. Three months later she was mountain climbing.
Three months from now, Jes will once again be mountain climbing. A summer of inconvenience and pain will result in a lifetime of renewed appreciation for her life, her friends, her family, her career aspirations, and the entire universe.
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