Life changes over night!!!! "Brooklyn"

This is my beautiful niece Brooklyn. She lives in Utah. In May of this year, her life changed drastically in the blink of an eye.  Brooklyn is an athlete and has been her whole life. She is an amazing soccer player.  She is vivacious, and fun, and confident and social, and funny, and very down to earth and kind. Apparently in the spring, she had been feeling severely tired, and she was seeing her athletic ability change.  Where she was the head of the pack before, now she was not able to even keep up. She was so frustrated by this and didn't understand what the problem was. Her mom Wendy, my sister, thought it might be Anemia. I suffered from Anemia for two years without knowing what was affecting me. I also had great changes in my athletic ability because of the anemia. Brooklyn was at her breaking point one night, and so Wendy took her to an instacare and they did some blood work on her. The next day at the doctors office, the doctor sent them straight to Primary Childrens Hospital. Wendy must have been in shock at the turn of events, and Brooklyn as well. They knew at this point it must be something worse than anemia. And it was. 

Brooklyn was diagnosed that day with LEUKEMIA

 Wendy and Brooklyn were in shock at the news. My brother in law Darin was out of town and so they were taking this news in on there own, until he returned as fast as he could the next day.  Brooklyn was immediately put into the ICU because of high protein levels, and after spending the night, she started her first bout of Chemo the very next day. She didn't even have time to go home and process what had happened and how her life had changed. One minute she was feeling tired and thought she needed a check-up, the next minute she is a cancer patient. Since those very first days, Brooklyn's life has changes so drastically. She has been through treatment after treatment of Chemo, she has lost her hair, been on steroids, lost weight, lost muscle tone, lost her ability to walk or run without braces on her legs, lost her appetite, lost the freedom to go to school or be with very many other people, but...She has never lost her spirit. She is an AMAZING INSPIRATION TO US!.

Brooklyn is like my own daughter. She has a special place in my heart. When she was born, I wanted another baby girl so badly, as I had just been through a miscarraige and she filled my heart with hope.  Soon after, I found out I was pregnant with Kennedy. Brooklyn looks just like my Kennedy, and since they were tiny, they have been so close. When we are in Utah for a month each summer, these girls are together constantly. So Brooklyn just becomes another part of my family.  So when I think of her hurting and going through all of this, I just think of my own girls, and it is so difficult. 

 Finding out the news about Brooklyn was devastating to our whole family and to so many people that love Brooklyn. She had touched so many lives. I think I cried for days and weeks, thoughts of her just popping into my head. Thoughts of what my sister is going through popping into my head. But we are so grateful that Brooklyn's prognosis is good after very aggressive sessions of Chemo that will last for a year or more.  The night I found out, I was in shock. It was late at night and I figured I would wait and tell the girls after school the next day.  They both sobbed. Carver shed some tears and kept saying..."It's not fair". The interesting thing about the timing of this whole thing was that both my girls had been working for weeks with clubs from their schools on "Relay for Life", which is an event to raise money and fight cancer. Kennedy was helping with "Builders club", and Kinsey with National Honors society. We had all planned to go to the Relay for Life event that night, each girl helping to run a booth.  All of a sudden, the whole event became so personal to us all.  It was great to be able to be there and light a luminary for Brook and send her good thoughts on the first night of her Chemo. 

                                                             All the lit luminaries.