Dotsie and all you great women!

What a great support you all are for someone like me! I have so appreciated your comments and your heart felt thoughts. Death is hard for us living. And we all need to have words of kindness and encouragement = thank you all again and again. So many of you have spoken to me with words that filled my heart - I am truly grateful -

I love telling stories about Nichole - she was someone about whom stories can be told = there was always SOMETHING day to day that had an exclamation point in it !!!! As I think about it , Nichole WAS an exclamation point! From the time of her conception to the time of her death.

She was someone to be reckoned with - she would tell you your faults, your strengths, and everything in between, never judging you, but telling you that you NEEDED to correct this problem and see reality for what it was. Just amazing.

Her birth started with an unusual beginning.. I was working as a receptionist at college to pay for tuition...one day, I felt the need to go to the bathroom and out came some grey matter . I was shocked to say the least and made an appointment with the doctor. Doctor explained that I was pregnant and so all was forgotten in the joy that ensued. About a month later, I had to leave work for an odd pain -- I went home, laid on the sofa an slept. Only to awaken to a ripping pain in my abdomen, went to the toilet and in the toilet were huge clots and much blood. So I called my doctor who was out of town of course. The "on call" said , well, you've probably lost the child, wait three days and call your personal physician. So I did. And when I went in, an ultra-sound showed the hearbeat of Nichole! But I was still cramping so he put me on Provera...3 months later, I became so huge with this pregnancy that he decided to take x-rays to see if there were twins. After many positions (uncomfortable at least) and many pictures, I saw "suits" coming into the room. Now I knew something was not right. And no one would tell me anything.....So I got up, went to the doctor's office and demanded to know the truth. He told me - we have seen two heads on this fetus - on many positions. But you must wait for 6 weeks to take another set to be sure. Can you imagine?????? And that night I was watching Johnny Carson and he had a two-headed turtle on his show!

Needless to say, I didn't sleep for 6 weeks. When I went in, everthing was fine. "Must have been an abboration - every time a picture was taken, the baby moved it's head...." Is that a little weird to you? Was to me......Everything went fine from then on...When she was born, she had a little crooked pinky finger and I thought, well, that's our reminder of what COULD have happened!

Well, we thought maybe we had lost her twin. In the beginning. We will never know. But a few years later, there was the brain tumor. And all HELL broke loose then.....Not JUST a brain tumor, but the tumor of all tumors - on the pituitary gland. Which had to be removed. Education begins here........we are in some REAL trouble...Catastophic trouble..And indeed it was.

But we made it for 32 years. That's something in itself. Today, thank God, these tumors can be "zapped" with minimal damage. Technology is a good thing sometimes........

More to come if you are interested

Searcher