My daughter Dakota Ann was diagnosed with infantile leukemia at 6 months old after a low grade fever and three small green bruises at a well visit.
We went from a young family living blissfully unaware to two people barely hanging on watching their baby girl fight to live.
We lived in the hospital tied to poles and bound by four walls for months on end.
We have seen her hooked up to so many tubes you could barely see her sweet face under all of the machinery.
We have heard her take her "first" breath for the second time in her short life after being intubated.
I held her in my arms, watched her face turn grey, her head fell away from me, her eyes rolled back in her head and her lips turned purple.
I thought in the moment we had both left our earthly bodies and gone to heaven.
But my girl, she is a fighter all her own and she taught us how to fight.
She is now four months off of treatment and shining like nothing I've ever seen.
The aftermath is almost as detrimental as the battle as we struggle daily with the trauma.
But she's still here.
Our gift, our glue, our reason for breathing is still breathing; so we push on.