#YouAreEnough30days Blog Challenge: Day 4

Day 4: In Chapter Two, a phone call one Monday morning changes the course of my entire life and my family’s lives. Share a time that you received life altering news, good or bad, and how it impacted your life.

November 4, 2018: In late November 2012, after my father visited different doctors, he was given the diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bones and the blood. Although this news was life altering, I was not surprised. For several months, my dad hadn’t been feeling well and complained about his back and shoulders hurting. Mom accompanied him to his doctor visits, some were out-of-town specialists. She brushed it off and told me everything would be fine and that nothing was seriously wrong with my father. I was no longer a little girl and could not accept Mom’s reassurance. I was a grown woman in my mid-30's. Over the years, I often heard Dad say, “I doubt that I’ll live past 50.” Well, 50 came and went and then Dad would say, “I doubt that I’ll live past 65.” His father (my Grandpa Hughes) passed away from cancer a month before he turned 66. I thought Dad was worried that he would end up like Grandpa, dying younger than Grandpa’s other brothers. Grandpa’s twin outlived him by more than 20 years and most of his brothers lived into their 80's. I had hoped that things would turn out differently for my father.

Unfortunately, he had several strikes against him. Dad was a Vietnam Vet and served one tour of duty there in the early 1970’s. He was probably exposed to Agent Orange. When we lived in Northern New Mexico during the late 1970’s, Dad worked in the uranium mines and was exposed to more chemicals.

The news of Dad’s cancer diagnosis changed my life so much that I knew things would never be the same. I tried to have enough faith to believe that he would pull through because I prayed a lot as well as many other people did. I read about several people who lived with the same cancer for several years, so maybe Dad could too. I was not prepared to see my dad lose his physical strength and shrink from six-foot-one down to my height of about five-foot-seven. Seeing him suffer was hard for me and I hated the thought of him spending years like this. After four or five months of the chemotherapy treatments (which stopped working), I prayed for God’s will to be done because at this point, I knew God’s best for Dad was more important than what I wanted.

On May 18, 2013, Dad passed away and my life was never the same. I still miss him every day and wish he could be here to see how far I’ve come in spite of the trials I’ve faced. I know he would be so proud of me.