How am I supposed to hand my heart over to a team of surgeons? Just set her down and wave bye-bye? Is it even possible for a mother to hand her child over – or do they have to literally peel the child from her arms?

She’s not getting her tonsils out. She’s not having a mole removed, or a pin put in her finger, or her appendix out…

They are reconstructing her skull.

Forgive me for being so blunt, but there is no other way to see it. It has taken me until just now, in this very moment, to actually think about the gravity of what is to occur. And I am ill.

One day soon she will be smiling and cooing, take a nap, and wake up in pain, afraid, swollen, groggy, strapped down, and reconstructed. And the last thing she will have remembered was her mommy kissing her and sending her off with strangers.

Some days it’s just too much to take.