Family Sponsorship – 6

Description

Tim and I were married on may 31 2003. We had our first son (Xavier) in september of 2003 after he was born premature. Our second son (Jayse) was born less than a year later in 2004 after he was also born prematurely. After 4 weeks in the hospital we were able to bring him home and our family was complete (so we thought). Our house burned down in December of 2012 right before Christmas and we moved to Whitehall in February 2013. We had more rooms in our new home and I had been working as a foster care caseworker and saw such a need for foster parents.

We went through all the required classes and had our first foster care placement in December 2013. We shared our home with 12 different kiddos until our first daughter was adopted in the summer of 2015. She was 3 years old when she was placed with us. In September of 2015, we received a call about taking a 3 year old and an 11 month old sibling group. We agreed to keep them over the weekend while the agency located appropriate family members. They have never left our home. We fell in love quickly and decided that with us would give them the best possibility of a healthy childhood. I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2016 and after fighting with the agency, they finally agreed that we could physically take care of them despite my disability. We were able to officially adopt our daughters in 2017.

Tim and I hit a very difficult patch and that ended in divorce in February of 2019. We quickly found our way back to one another and were back together in April 2019. We fought hard to work through all of our struggles and are better than we have ever been . We remarried on October 17,2020. It was the happiest day of my life. We went on our honeymoon and had the time of our lives. A week after being home, however, we noticed a small lump on Tim. That one small lump turned into two large ones, those two large ones turned into 4 in a matter of 7 days. After a week of not feeling well, he finally agreed to allow me to take him to the ER. They ran several test’s and confirmed our biggest fear. It appeared as though he either had lymphoma or leukemia. He completed a surgical biopsy and the diagnosis of Mantle Cell Lymphoma Blastoid variant stage 4 was received. He spent the next week waiting to see the oncologist and was severely sick. He was immediately sent to Butterworth where he learned that he had a condition called tumor lysis. Basically, the cancer was growing so quickly that it was making his blood septic. He spent a week in the hospital undergoing many tests and completing his first round of chemotherapy. This diagnosis has definitely pulled the rugs from under our feet but we are so hopeful that he will reach remission. There are a lot of hurdles to climb but we will take these hurdles one by one and hand in hand. 🙂