I sat on the bathroom floor as my husband lifted our 4-year-old’s limp body from my arms, carrying him into the living room. We worked in tandem, a terrible dance we had memorized to a song on repeat: one cleaning the blood from his face and neck, softly gripping his small fingers, the other holding towels to pinch his nose while simultaneously catching the blood that flowed from his eyes, which were shaking and rolling toward the back of his head.
Just as the sun-kissed hue started to drain from his face, his skin turning a dull pale, the bleeding stopped. We had made it through another episode.
I felt each hot, sticky tear roll down my face as I looked up at my husband holding our other child, the youngest, in his arms. We locked eyes and collapsed into each other, holding between us our children, the most important, the most vulnerable people in our lives, the ones we would die for.
Five years later, we still rely on dedicated specialists at Arizona’s only fully pediatric-focused hospital , Phoenix Children’s Hospital, to help our son who was diagnosed with a brain malformation and cyst at the base of his brain.