A quick PLEASE for all our friends.

Please, please, please.. if you have knees, now's the time to use them.

Our friend Jessica Easley, the 10 year old girl I wrote about before is nearing the end of her journey.

Jessica has been fighting alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma for the past 3 years. When she was 7, she lost her leg to the beast. After a brief remission she relapsed in her lungs. She fought unbelievably hard and achieved a second remission soon after.

Then only last month she confided in her Mom that she believed her cancer had returned.
Her heart hurt her, all the time. Mom tried hard to think she was wrong. Nothing else to go on.

Until.. a few weeks ago Jessica came down with a "cold" that caused fluid in her lungs.
A trip to the ER revealed that the beast has returned, with a vengeance. This time it was in her spine and her thoracic cavity wrapped around her aeorta.. near her heart.

Within days she was deemed "terminal" and was allowed to go home on hospice. Even for her young age, she's fought the beast so hard that she's exhausted her lifetime allowance of chemo and radiation. How does something like that happen to a 10 year old? For the last couple of weeks Jessica has been confined to a hospital bed in her living room and unable to move due to the intense pain the tumors are causing as they destroy her from within. Her spirits have remained high throughout this horrible time. A testament to the fight within her.

Her Mom says she has been diligently working on her "celebration of life" that is to come. She's been trying to strengthen her family so that they will be able to go on without her as she tries to prepare herself for Heaven. How does a kid do that?

Today, Jessica has taken a turn, her breathing is difficult. The beast has distorted her chest and is crowding her heart and lungs. One particularly nasty tumor invading her neck is impeding on her airway. She is terrified that she will suffocate.

They don't believe she has much time left with us and they are praying that Jessica gets her most important wish. To die peacefully in her sleep, without pain. A wish that up until now she's been denied.

She's only 10 years old. It's not fair.

www.caringbridge.org/visit/jessicaeasley