NOTE FROM THE MACS STAFF

Emerald's story was written before she passed away. We will update her story as soon as we receive more information from her family.

Emerald was born March 27th, 1994 by c-section. She was a cuddly baby. She has always been a very quiet, intelligent, caring child. In 2002 she got a wish of a little sister, and was the very first person to hold her. Of course, she wanted to have a baby brother as well... lucky for her she got what she wanted in December 2003.

Four weeks after her brother was born, she suddenly couldn't lift up her arm without lots of effort. Within a couple of weeks, she couldn't lift it at all. We took her to the doctor, who sent us to an orthopedic doctor. This doctor thought that it probably wasn't something serious, but we needed to get checked out by a neurologist. The appointment was going to take about 6 weeks to get. With each passing day, Emerald was in more and more pain. Finally, I decided to take her to the ER, I just couldn't wait 6 weeks. If it was something easy, then why sit in pain for that long, and if it wasn't, then we needed to work on it, NOW.

The ER set us up for an MRI the following day (January 30th, 2004). When we were done, Emerald and I got some breakfast and went home to spend time with Ian and Anya. As we were leaving they caught us and sent us to the Emergency Room. "You need to speak with them because they ordered the test." I KNEW this wasn't true because it had been written right on the prescription that the results should be sent to her pediatrician. We were met at the ER by a very solemn doctor who told us that they found a mass on the MRI and it was on Emerald's cervical spine. It's an Anaplastic Oligoastrocytoma Tumor Grade 3. I remember looking at Emerald and seeing the fear in her eyes, then I saw tears.

After that, things moved very quickly, on February 4th, Emerald had surgery in her cervical spine. 4 weeks later she started radiation. She has had physical therapy 3 times a week since the surgery. The surgery caused more damage to her than the tumor was causing. It has been a long road to get to the point of just being able to feed herself regularly. She still needs help getting up, and using the bathroom, but things are coming back much more quickly now. She still needs to use a wheelchair because the surgery also caused all over body weakness, particularly in her legs and arms.

In the near future, Emerald needs to have another surgery to correct her spine. It healed wrong from the previous surgery, where it curves outwards towards your back, instead of inwards towards your Adam's apple. They plan to put a couple of titanium plates to stabilize it.

Currently, she is beginning chemotherapy and is still on neck restrictions.

(..... to be continued .....)