We were visiting family in Chicago over spring break in 2007 when Kiddo woke up one night with a bad headache. We gave her some Children's Tylenol, chalked it up to the long nights and bad food associated with traveling and didn't give it a second thought.
Then she woke up the following Tuesday night with another bad headache. This time, it was much worse. She was throwing up and couldn't lay down without crying. We took her to the family doctor on Wednesday and he looked her over and said she appeared healthy. However, he said, there is no good reason why she should be having these headaches and throwing up. He ordered a CT scan of her head, just to be safe. About 2 hours later, they called us back over to the hospital to show us the scans and tell us that they'd found a mass inside of her brain. They said to go home and pack a couple of days of clothes for all of us and immediately take her to the Children's Hospital in St. Paul.
I don't remember feeling afraid or sad on the drive back home. I only remember a feeling of weightlessness that must be the sign that I couldn't grasp the news that we'd just been given. I couldn't really feel the steering wheel or the pedals of the car very well. I just kept telling myself, "Don't think about it. Go home. Pack. Drive to the hospital. Just do what you've been told."
