Where do you find your strength

Hour after and hour of sitting in my daughter's hospital room watching her fight for her life.....4,488 hours to be exact. I watched Sadie go through things that nobody should ever have to deal with - EVER! My 8 year old daughter fought so very hard to stay alive when everyone said she would not survive. Why? Why would you want to suffer and struggle so hard to stay here when leaving would have been so very easy. As her mother I wanted nothing more then for her to stay, only for selfish reasons of course. I could not imagine my life without her, I would not even let that thought enter into my head. But as a person I could not say that I would have fought so hard to live. No, I think I would have given up and taken the easy way out.

The pain that she endured is simply unimaginable both physically, mentally and emotionally. She had so much taken from her in a matter of days and then months and months of pain. Trapped inside her body, dependent on others for everything.

Shortly after Sadie was transferred out of the Intensive Care Unit, her sister and I were spending some time alone talking. She asked me "Mom, why didn't you just let her die?" I swallowed back my tears and replied "That was only a choice that your sister could have made and she is not ready to leave us." Her sister said "Mom, why would anyone want to live like this, why would you want to live this way. My sister is gone, she is someone else now ."

In many ways she was right, this was not the same Sadie that entered the hospital 60 days ago. The first 2 months I had just been on auto-pilot and had not stopped to really grasp what all of this meant to the rest of our lives. This was not the same child and would probably never be again. How do you deal with that? There is nobody to help you deal with this, there is no rule book. It is like dealing with a death, I had to morn the loss of who she use to be. My child was now a different person.........or was she?