A Birthday

It's the eve of Logan's 5th birthday.

Had you asked me one year ago today if I thought that he'd have a fifth birthday to celebrate, I'd have looked at you like you were crazy and said 'of course; he'll have 5, 15, 25 of them and beyond'. But then August 16th came and all of that changed.

There were many times over the course of the past 11 and a half months when I didn't know if he'd make it to July 31, 2011: When we first discovered that ugly, evil, enormous mass in his brain via CT on August 16, 2010. When we heard the pathology report and learned the seriousness of what we were dealing with; when there were odds of survival put forth and they weren't particularly pretty numbers. When the hospital screwed up and a c-diff infection was allowed to get horribly bad last Fall before it was caught, landing Logan in the hospital on oxygen, retaining massive amounts of fluid and languishing in bed when he should've been home recovering before the start of round 3. When Dr. T shared that he and the team had missed the spinal tumors in January. When Logan very nearly bled out during surgery in early February when an artery in his neck suddenly burst, and then two weeks later when Dr. T shared the bad news that the spinal tumors had grown exponentially during the two weeks between the failed surgery attempt and the successful resection; when he said that though he doesn't tell parents to give up, it didn't look good.

It's been a painful path to take, but as I reflected to a friend on Friday over coffee, if those things hadn't happened, the miracle that is Logan's 5th birthday wouldn't be as incredible as it is. It would, to put it simply, but just another birthday. But the reality is that it's so much more than that.

It's the perfect day for celebrating our little survivor. It's the perfect day for thanking God for restoring our family, for restoring his health. And for praying with every fiber of our beings that He will continue to keep Logan healthy long into the future; that He will keep the cancer away; that He will keep him safe from any kinds of infection; that He will protect his body from the long-term effects of the grueling treatment he's endured. All of those things and just so, so many more.

Happy birthday, Logan. We love you soooooo much.