This past week was, without a doubt, the hardest of my entire life.
There is a specific kind of quiet that settles into a hospital room when your body begins to shut down. You can feel the energy draining out of you, cell by cell, until the idea of letting go feels less like giving up and more like finding rest. After a long, heartbreaking conversation with a night nurse, I made a choice: I prepared to go on hospice. I was ready to sign the paperwork.
Going on hospice meant acceptance. It meant insurance would stop trying to prolong my life, and we would focus only on comfort. The doctors were brutally honest with us—they didn't think I would make it more than another day. They warned my family that my body was so frail, a fatal heart attack was likely imminent. It felt unreal, surreal, and final.
Then, everything shifted.
Right at the moment I was preparing to say my final goodbyes, people started showing up. It began with my incredible family, who dropped everything and traveled from multiple states just to be in that room—to stand by me, my husband Mike, and our kids. But it didn’t stop there. Friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers began reaching out.
Two people I had never met in my life showed up at the hospital. An incredible woman wrote me a letter and had it delivered to my room. Inside was a story of profound hope and resilience—a narrative of how she had fought and beat cancer. Every single word on that paper felt like it had been tailored specifically for my soul. It was exactly what I needed to hear, precisely when I needed to hear it.
Surrounded by this sudden, overwhelming wave of love, something miraculous happened inside me. My body responded to what my heart was feeling. Within a matter of hours, my potassium levels—which had plummeted to a dangerously low critical level—surged back up to 2.4.
When I woke up the next morning, the nursing staff seemed completely stunned. A doctor walked in, looked at my charts, and told me he had never seen anything quite like it in his entire career. He looked at me and said something that will stay with me for the rest of my days: "You must have found a reason to live."
He was right. I did.
I looked at my family, and I thought about my children. My youngest is only 16 years old. We are so close, but my deepest wish has always been to see every single one of my children reach their 18th birthday and step into adulthood. I realized in that quiet morning light that I hadn't finished my job yet. I wasn't done living because it simply wasn't my time.
This week taught me two opposing, beautiful truths. I learned that I can be at peace with dying if and when the time comes. But more importantly, I learned that my time isn't now.
Life has a way of changing on a dime. We walk through the world thinking we know what tomorrow looks like, but we truly never know what the future holds. We never know who might lift us up in our darkest, most desperate hours. We never know who will step through the door when we need help the very most.
In a matter of days, I was stunned by the kindness of strangers, blessed by the generosity of friends, and completely floored by the unconditional love of my family.
My health, to be clear, is still in a very precarious place. The road ahead isn't suddenly easy, and the medical battle isn't over. But my spirit is fundamentally changed. I used to think luck was about avoiding hardship. Now I know better. I am the luckiest person in the whole world—not because life is easy, but because I have the absolute best family and friends supporting me through the storm.
Never lose hope. Love is stronger than medicine, and as long as there is love, there is always a reason to keep fighting.
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