Why I Run

These two pictures are a piece of our past; thankfully, and praise God, they are way in the past. They are from 2003, right before our daughter Abby's 2nd birthday, in March. For a couple of months before this date, she had been ill with strange symptoms (multiple bouts of pneumonia, limping, lethargic). Her pediatrician sent us to Children's Hospital in Dayton for blood work, and she was admitted the next morning. A bone marrow test confirmed what the pediatrician suspected, and what the blood work showed - Abby had Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL - http://www.leukemia-lymphoma.org/all_page?item_id=7049).
These pictures are from Abby's week of admission to the hospital, where she had multiple procedures, and a port placed under the skin in her chest where she could get IV chemo. That chemo would take her the next 26 months to complete.
I don't share these pictures to be sad or gloomy. Instead, whenever I look at these, I am thankful and over-the-top joyful that Abby is the strong, smart, sassy girl she is today. I want every kid with leukemia or lymphoma to have the outcome we are blessed with. I want every kid with these cancers to get through it, to survive. I want every parent to be able to feel the relief and thankfulness that Greg and I are so grateful to feel.

This is why I run.