“On
a wing and a prayer”
Written
on the wall of Megan's bedroom
We
signed Megan up for college on July 26th 2002
and got everything ready. She was having headaches
that year - they had
started in late April. I chalked them up to allergies
we had battled her whole life. When we got home from
the college enrollment, she told me that the headaches
weren’t like the ones she'd had before - and
her sleeping habits were almost unheard of. Sometimes
she would
sleep
in excess of 18 hours a day. I decided to get her checked
out before sending her 5 hours away from me.
The
first diagnosis was teenage high blood pressure.
Megan began
hallucinating from the medication they gave her to
correct it. I told the doctor, “no more
blood pressure medicine, find out what’s wrong.” On
that next Tuesday Megan went to have a CT scan. Her
doctor wanted to find the cause of the headaches.
I was called later on Tuesday night and the nurse informed
me that I was to show up with Megan on Friday for the
results. We were told it was a tumor, but due to her
father's
family history, they figured it was a water tumor,
same as her grandma and aunt’s. They had both
had surgery and survived with an excellent prognosis.
That
was August 2nd, the day my perfect world started spinning
out of control. We
took Megan to the Neurological Department of Methodist
Hospital. She was seen by 4 different
doctors that day.
I remember one of them telling me that they would do
surgery, remove the tumor and in no time Megan would
be OK - possibly a few lasting effects, but nothing to
worry about - it was only a water tumor. That’s
what they told me, but in the next 3 weeks I would
watch my beautiful
baby girl go through seizures and sleep very little because
of them. She lost 63 lbs. in less than 30 days.
On
Aug. 23rd I had called the doctors, telling them
that Megan
was dying before my eyes - I did not believe that
it was
just
a water tumor. On August 26th, she was scheduled for
a biopsy. They went in, found the tumor and got right
back out.
Megan was bleeding within her brain. The tumor was
vascular, a Glioblastoma stage IV on the brain
stem, and totally
inoperable. I knew that Megan would never again open
those beautiful
eyes or ever call me mom again. I made the
decision I promised her I would make - I donated whatever
organs my daughter had that could be used. She saved
2 people
from sure death. I let her go home to God because she
was His well before she was mine.
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