I was born three months early, at one pound and nine ounces, and the doctors gave me three days to live because I wasn’t breathing on my own. But I got through that. Then at 7, I was diagnosed with a very rare form of leukemia, I had a 1 in 10 billion chance of survival. But a bone marrow transplant saved my life. Then, at 28, I was diagnosed with another form of cancer which spread out from the uterus, and a chronic liver condition caused by the chemotherapy and radiation which I had as a child. I’m still under watch for the cancer to ensure it doesn’t spread but am considered in stable condition.

We got our son through a kinship agreement. Unfortunately, his biological mother is a heavy drug addict and hasn’t been able to turn herself around. When we went to start the adoption process, they said we couldn’t because my son’s biological parents still held their rights to the child. So, we had to go to court to release their rights. The father was okay with it, we’re distantly related to him, and he signed his rights away saying we can give him a better life, but the mom fought it quite a bit. But we just recently had her rights released and that’s a huge milestone for us! We’re now just waiting on the court process to go in and finalize everything. We got him when he was 2 weeks old and he’ll be 4 this November. He is the most precious gift to us. Doctors said I was sterile from all the chemo/radiation from when I was younger; we miscarried 3 of our babies so we figured that we couldn’t have kids.