For Korinne someday.....

Dear Baby Korinne,

As I write this, you're not yet 16 months old. You suffer from epilepsy, the worst kind. The kind that has literally taken your breathe away at times, and you had to be put on a machine to breathe for you.

Yesterday the neurologist told me you have a much higher risk of leaving me than most epileptic patients. Korinne, my heart is ripped out right now. I could not sleep last night and everything on and in me hurts. I cried all day. I lay in bed begging God to take me instead. I said to Him "God if I could exchange my life so that Korinne would never have another seizure, you can take me now. Please keep all my children safe and protected in my absense."

I guess life doesn't work that way.

I am not sure when you'll read this. My hopes is that when you're a teenager like your other siblings and think I am out to get you with my rules and standards and just make life miserable, you will see how deeply I love you. So much I would lay my own life out just to spare you pain. Korinne, your daddy and I wanted to bring you into this world so bad. It took us such a long time to get you here. We had month after month of heartbreak and tears with each negative pregnancy test. Then the most glorious day happened July 12th 2006, we got those two lovely lines that told us you were going to come to us in roughly 8 months. Of course your arrival was late by almost two weeks. I will never forget as long as I shall live, the first time I saw you. That dark hair which is now blonde at the time I write this. How absolutley perfect you were! Daddy held you for over an hour looking at you with such wonder. He waited 48 years to become a daddy and there you were! Finally!

We had seven months of very little worry. You seemed so healthy. So strong. Nothing could touch you. November 1st, 2007, my world came crashing down when I watched you have your first seizure. Thanksgiving Day, we almost lost you. My sweet little daugther, nothing in this world could describe the hell I felt inside. I started losing my own will to live. Those two weeks in ICU were hell. First seizures then respitory failure. When they removed your breathing tube, it formed a scar which blocked your airway and you had to have surgery. It took you a couple weeks to recover so many ups and downs with your medicine, too much too little, then you got the flu. I had not seen that smile in so long. One day, about five weeks after the ordeal Thanksgiving Day, you were laying with me in bed. I looked at you and smiled at how cute you looked looking back at me. Then there it was, that smile I love so much. It looked like someone drew a line across your face it was so big. I had to just hug you and cry.

You saw so many of my tears yesterday. Through my tears you smiled. Were you trying to tell me something sweet daughter? I lay in bed imagining you at different ages. I imagined you at 2, then about 5, a couple of times through the teen years, and finally, I saw a beautiful woman about the age of 50. I was then a very old woman and you were there next to me, this beautiful poised woman holding my hand and looking at me. That's how I want it Korinne. When my time is done here, I want to see all of you children of mine, all around me. I want to see my grandchildren, which I hope are many. I want to see some great-grandchildren. But my sweet Korinne, it's you I want to hold my hand as I leave this world for the other. We've been through such much together.

"Lord, please hear my prayer. Spare my sweet Korinne her life. Let her know what it is to grow up, have friends, fall in love, and know the joys and heartache of motherhood. I will be willing to sacrifice anything else you ask of me......"