My past, My Memories, My First Born

Last night I was telling my friend Nikki and my husband about this blog... So of course when I went to bed this is all I could think about.  First off not letting it whoop me, my BFF Sister says it is really easy, well I beg to differ... So my goal is to master this blog site (heehhehe).

I am excited to get started, I have so much bottled up inside of me and it wants to get out but I am not really sure where to start (AKA Life Time Story).. So I am going to start with 1987...

October 19, 1987 my beautiful "Jessica Gayle Holcombe" was born a red head to our wonderful family, and boy was she amazing.  She smiled all the time.  Some wonderful memories I have is her love, she wanted to get so close to you know matter where you were that if she could crawl inside your skin "SHE WOULD"... Her favorite person in the world was her cousin "Chad Wade" and trust me when I say favorite because we were all getting a little scare, Jess loved him so much she would say "we are getting married one day", well that would have been strange, Chad loved Jess too he was so very good to her.

My BFF Sister watched Jessica for me when I worked late and Jessica's bedroom was Tami's bathroom LOL Jessica would sleep in Tami's tub, it was the sweetest thing ever, she loved her Ammy...

Jessica loved school, she first attended Rehma Christian Academy, until it became to expensive and then she transferred to Haw Creek Elementary.  She loved Haw Creek there she met so many wonderful friends (she gets that from her mom :) ).  Her best friends was Brianna Worley and Shannon (now married with two beautiful babies), those were her besties.  Brianna and Jessica would stay at our house allot, and they would sing, and make Christmas lists. Jessica was so selfless, she always thought of others before she thought of her self even at such a young age, she would make sure she asked Santa to bring her mommy a new house coat, her daddy a video game, and her baby sister a tent, she always asked what she wanted last.

I can only talk about Jessica for so long until I get weepy, so I want to talk about my baby girl in a positive sense so I will come back to my wonderful memories about her.  I will say that my life changed in 1996 and has never been the same.  In almost 15 years this year I can honestly tell you that not a day goes by that I don't wish we could replay 10/19/87 back over again.

On 9/3/1996 it was a Friday night and my girls loved Taco night and TGIF it was a tradition in our family.  We were having our special family night when Jessica said "Mommy I don't feel very good" so I suggested she put on her Jammie's... When she was returning with her Jammie's on she got very sick at her belly and started to vomit, I assumed it was my "Taco's" so I gave her something for her tummy and put her to bed for some rest.  Saturday came and Jessica did not feel better, I was worried so I took her into Asheville Family Health (where I worked at the time) and she got to see Mike Mahew her favorite doctor. She had the signs of the flu so Mike placed her on Phenegren and lots of clear fluids and rest. The Phenegren put her fast asleep where she slept most of the day and all of Sunday. 

On Labor Day 09/6/1996 Jessica woke up and she was projectile vomiting and I noticed her left eye was dilated, I got very worried so we called Mike at home and said Dr. Stephens is on call at Mission Hospital I will call him you all meet him there.

So we did, at that point they ran so many tests I could not keep up with them, later to find out that we checked in but we were not checking out, this was so scary that your entire body goes numb and you are really just reacting on pure Adrenalin.  Dr. Stephens decided to run a cat scan and to our surprise our baby girl had tumors in her head several so they began the prep for brain surgery and at that point found that the tumors were in-operable  and stared the process to transfer us to Duke University.

We were so lucky with the people that loved us that one of our friends had is father-n-law fly us to Duke on his personal jet, Jessica thought that was the greatest thing in the world. We got to Duke and met with the Cancer specialist Dr. Longey and from there the nightmare began.  With multiple test they found that Jessica had a large tumor on her left optical nerve and about 9 through out her brain.  They gave us a couple of options (none of which were very good), since they could not operate we had the choice of letting her survive with out them for about a year but not without pain or we had the choice to try what they called a "High Powered round of Chemo" well at the time of course we wanted the tumors gone and wanted our baby to be "Okay" so we opted for Chemo. 

"It's Okay Mommy" and then continued with the seizure.  I was at a loss for words, I was just at a loss to be honest.

Dr. Longey was amazing even though he had to deliver terrible news, we went back home to Asheville and back to Mission Hospital where Dr. Elliston had to tell us that the tumors where not going away and that we had maybe 2 years with our daughter.  I can only remembering falling to my knees and praying that I would wake up that this could not happen to her, why not "ME" please give me the tumors let my baby live.

Stay tuned because I have so much more to share...Right now I need to take a break as this is very hard for me to get out and trust me I should have done this 14yrs ago.

Remember along this path with me that I will refer back to my family and friends very often, what you will read about next is amazing love.....