What a visit

On Monday Owen and I welcomed some very special guests to our home. For those of you that read this blog regularly you may remember sweet Addie. ( for those of you who are knew click on the link below)
http://fight4owen.blogspot.com/2009/06/some-of-you-may-remember-story-of-owens.html

Addie's mom Kim and Addie's brother Ryan came to visit us. Kim and I email each other quite often and she has truly been such an amazing source of information and support for me. She really knows how I feel and I don't have to explain everything...she just gets it and she gets me. It is a fabulous feeling because so many others just don't.

We had never had the opportunity to meet face to face before Monday. I wasn't nervous at all. We have discussed so many intense and difficult subjects in the past that I felt totally comfortable having her over.

Can I just say that I knew Kim was awesome even before I met her...but after actually sitting and talking( for almost 4 hours by the way!) I was amazed at what a strong, driven, dedicated mother she is. I honestly don't know how she has made it through everything and is still in one piece. Her sweet Addie girl was extremely, extremely sick. She was diagnosed at 6 weeks old with Type 1 SMA and fought so hard through her much too short life. Addie passed away in December at 20 months old.

Kim is always so honest and open with me and I can't thank her enough for sharing many intimate and private stories and details. I could go on and on but I am just so thankful that she is in our life and I look forward to remaining friends for a very long time.

We only cried twice which was great. I was expecting waterworks the whole time. The funny thing is that when you live this every day I think that a part of you becomes desensitized to it because we talked about so many really serious topics as though we were discussing the weather or the latest celebrity gossip. Death, sickness, extremely hard medical choices that we have to make, DNR's, emergency situations. doctors...the list goes on and on. I found it comforting that we both absolutely love certain doctors and also had the same complaints and gripes about other doctors. Andy and I share with Kim and Greg so many of the same views on how we want to deal with this disease and how far we are willing or not willing to go. It validated many of our decisions and made me even more confident that we are doing the right things and that we will continue to make the right choices in the future.

Thank you for driving all the way here to visit. It was amazing and I look forward to getting together again soon. Kim went out and bought three of Addie's favorite books to give to Owen. It was incredibly thoughtful and very meaningful to me. I will treasure them always!