Mystery Lady

It's taken me a long time to write this post. A week or two ago, we were told that Maisie has Werner's Syndrome.

She doesn't.

Less than forty-eight hours after receiving the diagnosis, we got another call. They ran the blood test again and the results were different. So they drew more blood, ran the test, and it came back negative for Werner's. By some crazy fluke, we had a diagnosis for two days, and now it's gone.

My little lady is a mystery again. Oh well.

The truth is, I'm relieved. Werner's Syndrome is an rapid-aging disease, with the prognosis at 40 years. She would never grow up normally. She would age quickly, develop osteoporosis and diabetes and die of a heart attack at forty. That's not a happy ending.

Maybe, at this point, it's too much to ask for a happy ending.

Maybe we'll have an ending that will be no happier than that one.

But Werner's Syndrome is not our ending.

After we got confirmation that the diagnosis was wrong, I cried for two hours.

Tears of happiness.

Werner's Syndrome felt like a slammed door on hope. She was going to get sicker and sicker and die young and that's it.

And then I had hope again. I cried and cried and praised the Lord and sobbed and when I was done, I crawled into bed at five o'clock in the afternoon and held Maisie's tiny, frail body in my arms as I rested, really slept, for the first time in four days.