An Open Letter to the Kind Folks of the World

On one of the last sunny days before this rainy Maine summer, our 5 year-old daughter Amelia was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia – ALL for short. She had been fatigued, cranky, and her lovely complexion grew more sallow with every passing day in the weeks leading up to our frantic tour through three hospitals. We attributed it to end-of-school year burnout, a growth spurt, a lurking virus, even – we hoped – undiscovered diabetes.

The day before ALL became part of our lexicon, Amelia fell in a parking lot. She was holding hands with her little sister, who began to run, as free-spirited toddlers will. Amelia couldn’t keep up. She stumbled to the asphalt and scraped her knee, which began to bleed profusely. It struck me how very thin her blood was, watery and almost completely without color. So when, at one A.M. on Friday, June 5th, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist pulled us out of Amelia’s glass room in the Intensive Care Unit at Maine Medical Center, I knew his opinion before he spoke the words. I had a glimpse of the road before us, paved with spinal taps, a compromised immune system, caustic drugs, frequent hospital stays, surgeries, and hair loss. My little girl had cancer.