Our Life Changes

At around 5:30 PM, on Monday, November 17, our lives changed drastically and forever.

I was sitting in the Emergency Room of Bridgeport Hospital. A doctor whose name I can't remember came into the room where I was waiting with Annalise and Nathaniel and said, "They found a mass in her brain." It was like somebody punched me in the stomach. The doctor continued to talk, but I didn't hear a thing. Inside my little Isabella's head, there was a tumor growing and if left there, would kill her.

Up in the MRI room, Julianne was sitting with Isabella. We had already suspected that it was neurological in nature. As the MRI scan ran, Julianne comforted Isabella as she lay in the giant machine that was making loud noises. Julianne peeked over at the technicians sitting behind the glass and was immediately devastated by what she saw. As the images of Isabella's head came into view, looks of horror ran across every one of their faces. Julianne herself would not look at the images, but she knew this wasn't good.

The MRI scan found a massive tumor in Isabella's head. It was 10 cm x 7 cm and had replaced her entire left temporal lobe. It had already begun to affect her, as she had been complaining of headaches and just over the weekend, we noticed tremors in her right hand. The tremors affected her so much, that Isabella had started using her left hand for her primary activity including writing and eating.

The remainder of this blog will describe what happened over the course of the next days as our family now deals with the worst scenario that we can imagine.