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Grand Magnate
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Red Wing, MN
Posts: 3,166
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Grand Magnate
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Red Wing, MN
Posts: 3,166
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For LeeAnna
Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. I can't tell you enough how much it means.
I just feel the need to tell you a little about LeeAnna. She is my daughter. My parents were emergency foster parents for babies and toddlers for many years, and she came to their house when she was 6 months old, dx'd as a failure to thrive baby. Her birth mother wasn't a bad person, she had 3 older kids and just wasn't able to care for them. LeeAnna moved in with me and I was able to adopt her, as a single parent, shortly thereafter. She was a beautiful child, bright brown eyes and long brown hair halfway down her back by the time she was a year & a half. She was the best baby..
As she grew up, she developed A.D.D., struggled with school, but was determined to graduate. She did graduate, class of 2000.
She has since had many physical problems, including a herniated disc in her back, and her right knee and ankle would give out with no warning. She wore braces for both, and had physical therapy every two weeks. She had so much pain, and yet managed to work every summer for a family that runs carnival rides at many fairs here in MN,ND,SD, and IA..She worked one of the kiddie rides, and loved it as she loved small children and enjoyed seeing them have fun. It was hard work, but she loved it. It made her happy.
She came home about three weeks ago, after the big fair in Spencer, IA. I took her to the emergency room last Saturday with severe abdominal pain. At first they dx'd her with pancreatitus, but the pain moved lower, so they decided it was the pain med she took for her back that was now causing the pain in her stomach. They had her on morphine in the hospital, which they stopped when they couldn't wake her and her breathing became too shallow. They sent her home Tuesday with a new rx. She seemed better, but when I went to check on her Thursday morning, she was gone. There is no definative answer as to what happened yet, but the medical examiner believes it may have been that her heart just stopped. They found heart problems nobody knew she had before.
Right now I'm angry (don't know at who, if anyone), and grieving my baby girl..That small package, all 5'2" of her, had a big heart..But there are a couple of things I have taken away from this nightmare that I wanted to share..
1) Is there someone in your family, in your life, you've almost given up on, or have given up on, for whatever reason? Don't give up on them. Love them anyway.
2) Look around you and see, really see, the people you love. Tell them. Tell them now, because you may not have another chance.
My daughter was 27, and really just coming into her own..I will never regret the time I spent with her, only the time I didn't, because there is no more time. It's wrong, this isn't the order it should happen in. Parents shouldn't have to bury their child. Grandparents shouldn't have to bury their grandchild. But things don't always happen the way they're supposed to.
This is for LeeAnna who, along with my son, I love more than life itself.
Again, thank you all so much. You're caring would have meant so much to LeeAnna, as it does to me and the rest of my family. Bless you all.
Kris
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