Missy

I love reading all the posts people make on Facebook during the month of November where they tell things for which they're thankful. I think a lot of people lose sight of all the positives in their lives, only focusing on the negative, so for me these posts are like a ray of sunshine.

I have a lot to be thankful for and even with all the drama that finds it's way into our lives I try to never lose sight of the good.   I'm blessed beyond belief and so thankful for my children Brandi and DJ, my husband Milton and my precious granddaughter Bella.  I have wonderful parents (Burford, Joyce, Jim and Kay) and awesome siblings: Kelly, Jimmy (Oakley), Robin, Karen, Laura, Missy, Jimmy (Parrott) and Charlie.  That's right folks, I have 8 siblings - and yes, two of my brothers (and one of my fathers) are named Jimmy (well actually James and Jimmy, but I digress)  All of my brothers and sisters are wonderful, thoughtful people whose hearts are full of love and kindness. Any of them would - and have - stopped whatever they're doing to run to the aid of another family member...but nobody...and I do mean NOBODY has shown the depth of devotion for her sibling that my sister Missy has.

On March 9, 2010 my brother Jimmy (pictured above with Missy) was admitted to the hospital with what he believed to be bronchitis. Unfortunately the urgent care doc he'd seen had misdiagnosed him and he actually had a bad case of double pneumonia....I'm talking REALLY BAD...so bad that it almost killed him several times.

The small county hospital he originally went to immediately transported him to a large hospital in St. Louis and upon his arrival there he had a seizure and stopped breathing.  It's a long and heart breaking saga, he was put on a ventilator and was in a coma for a very long time.  He developed every complication you could imagine; his lungs collapsed several times, he contracted the MRSA virus, he developed a yeast infection in his blood, he went into kidney failure, and there was more...much, much more.

My family and I basically lived at the hospital for the first few weeks, but eventually my brother Charlie and I had to go back to work and my sister Missy stepped up to the plate.  For months she and Mom Parrott sat by Jimmy's bedside, nursing him back from the brink of death.  Missy educated herself on Jimmy's conditions and became a walking, talking encyclopedia of information, medications and treatment options.  She hunted down the best rehab center and got Jimmy a bed there, she fought with insurance companies, doctors, whoever she had to go up against to make sure that Jimmy got the best care available...and almost three years later she's still caring for Jimmy.

My brother is better, a lot better actually, but he's still not well.  There have been many hospitalizations over the last (almost) three years and she's been there every time. She and Mom P give Jimmy around the clock care and it's because of them that Jimmy is alive today.

A lot of people say they'd do anything for their brother but I wonder if the unthinkable happened how many actually would. Missy gave up her life, her job, her freedom...EVERYTHING...to care for our brother. For 2 years 8 months and 15 days her sole focus has been Hobb's continued care and recovery. She is personally responsible for every major improvement for him...and she continues this commitment - without hesitation - indefinitely.

So this month...and every day of every month, I'm thankful for my little sister Missy. She is a loving warrior and I want to be just like her when I grow up.

I love you Missy

Drowning no more!

When my son was a little boy he got a terrible case of food poisoning after eating old ice cream at his Grandma Moder's house.  In all my years I've never seen a child vomit so much and he ended up having to be admitted to St. Louis Children's Hospital for several days.  It was my first experience having one of my children in the hospital but my most clear memory of the entire stay had nothing to do with my family at all.

It's funny how our memory can take snapshots of moments and replay them over and over throughout your life. It's like your subconscious knows that this moment will need to be remembered so it burns the image into your brain.  In our case the image that was burned was that of an exhausted and obviously distraught mother and a very sick teenage girl huddled around something with another woman who was obviously a hospital employee.

I couldn't hear what they were saying but I was literally stopped in my tracks when I saw the mother. The look of total despair and being overwhelmed were so evident on this poor woman that it was all I could do to stop myself from walking up and offering to hold her while she cried.

When the nurse I was walking with realized I was no longer beside her she came back and looked at the family with me and said, "I feel so bad for that family, their daughter was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes last night and they're going through our training for diabetic families."

Little did I know that only a few years later I would become that mother and know first hand the devastation she was feeling.  I would also look as overwhelmed, exhausted and lost as she did.

When your child is diagnosed with Type 1 (Juvenile) Diabetes your entire life changes in an instant and from that moment on you live in survival mode.  The thing I remember most from our "Diabetic Boot Camp" 3 day training session in the hospital is Brandi and I sitting down with the diabetes educator and being told that Brandi could eat anything she wanted - in MODERATION - but that we would have to become experts at reading nutrition labels, determining the number of carbs she was eating, then doing the math to figure out exactly how much insulin we would need to inject to cover the carbs consumed. Thank God I had always been good at math, because it can get really complicated to figure the dose out at times.

Survival mode becomes your new normal when your child has diabetes.  You never really get use to it, but you go on...because going back to your old life isn't an option.

Unfortunately for some of us there's another level beyond survival mode...I refer to it as "Drowning Mode". Our family went into drowning mode four years ago when Brandi's body no longer responded to her daily insulin injections the way it should and she became so sick I knew she was going to die.

There is nothing worse...absolutely NOTHING...then looking at your child and seeing the life fading from them.  I know many of you are nodding your heads and saying, "I know, it's terrible" but trust me, you have NO idea what it's actually like until you live it.

We were lucky because eventually her doctor figured out why she had become resistant to insulin...complete adrenal failure... and although she was now able to take daily medications to keep the adrenal failure from killing her, we now had something much worse than diabetes to deal with, we had insulin resistant diabetes!

So for four years we've been in drowning mode where our lives have been nothing but a continual circle of dangerously high blood sugar levels, astronomical levels of insulin injections, DKA, more hospitalizations than I can count, seizures, comas, weight loss (Brandi...not me), doctors appointments, MORE doctors appointments, calls to 9-1-1 when she was too critical to be taken to the hospital by car, days of no sleep, vomiting...lots of vomiting due to high blood sugar, research for new treatments, being told Brandi needed a pancreas transplant, never ending fundraising for a transplant, hospital bills, medication bills, doctor bills...did I mention no sleep....oh yeah, working 80 - 100 hours a week to pay for all the above while trying to provide a good stable  home environment for a toddler.

We weren't surviving...we were drowning, plain and simple.  No matter how hard we worked, no matter what we did it was never enough, Brandi wasn't getting better - she was actually getting much worse. 

In hindsight it seems like things came to a breaking point for our family in March of this year during one of Brandi's multiple hospitalizations. Blood work showed that Brandi was severely malnourished....we're talking a reading of ZERO on the test, something that none of her doctors had ever seen before. Her endo described the reading as that of a starving Ethiopian child just hours before they die. Yep...THAT got our attention.

So now they had to figure out exactly none of the food Brandi was eating was providing the nourishment it should, and we prayed...and we asked EVERYBODY to pray for her. We received a miracle (there's really no other explanation for it) and Brandi's levels started going up again...but she still was a very sick young woman.

And then, in August our family received a miracle in the form of a diabetic alert dog named Hope. The moment Hope met Brandi for the first time she alerted to a high blood sugar - another picture that is burned into my brain...that first alert.

Life has changed a lot since Hope came to our home. Brandi's blood sugar levels are still all over the place (and due to an additional seizure medication we now deal with a lot of lows as well as highs) but Hope catches almost all of them. Hope alerts all the time, she alerts to Brandi, she's alerted to Bella (who was 200, which is above the 180 Hope alerts to for a high, but still within limits for a child of her age) and recently it was pointed out that Hope has been alerting to ME.  Okay, the truth is that Brandi's been telling me that for weeks, but I blew off the notion because I'm not diabetic. I finally listened when our trainer Dana pointed out the same thing during lunch one day and told me to check my blood sugar, which was 111 only 1 point above Hope's alert level of 110 - BUT I had just eaten so obviously my level had been below 110 when she had been alerting. I was encouraged to check each time Hope alerted to me (which I have) and she's been right every time, with my blood sugars ranging between 80-100 at each check. 

The other day Hope alerted to Brandi during a training session and Brandi told Dana that she knew she was really high, so I immediately felt the panic of how high? 500? 600?  Too high to register?
The glucometer showed 256...definitely high, but not "drowning mode" high.

I think it was that moment that I realized we were no longer in drowning mode and really hadn't been since we got Hope. Not one hospitalization since her arrival...not one bout of DKA.

So now I am deeming our family firmly back in "Survival Mode" and I must admit it feels great to merely be surviving again. I feel like I can breathe and am actually starting to enjoy life again...something I haven't done in years.

Besides the obvious joys of seeing Brandi more healthy, there's the added bonus of "me" time.  I forgot what it was like to take an hour a day simply for myself, but I do it now without guilt. I use the time to walk, which is not only making me physically healthier, but improving my emotional health as well.  I'm learning to relax...I'm not petrified at the thought of going to work and coming home to a dead daughter, which means I can give people calling in with emergencies 100% of my attention.

I would love to live a "normal" life again, but I know it's never going to happen...so for now I'm content to be back in survival mode, counting carbs and watching my D-Child the way every other D-Mom and Dad does.

The Grandma Tradition



I love to cook, I love everything about it.  I like planning a menu then shopping for everything needed to make a meal for my family and friends.  I like picking through all the fresh produce for the best of the best to put in the dish.

Probably my fondest memories as a child is sitting on a yellow stool next to the stove while my Grandma Parrott cooked meals. She explained everything she did with such patience and it never seemed like a cooking lesson, it was just spending time with my granny and even though it's been more than 40 years I can remember those times like it was yesterday.

When my daughter was born I had big dreams of teaching her to cook, but Brandi had absolutely no interest in learning. While I like to make everything from scratch she is perfectly happy opening a frozen pot pie and throwing it in the oven. To this day she prefers chicken and dumplings made from canned biscuit dough rather than rolled ones made from scratch...an art I only recently mastered.

My dream came true with Bella though, from the time she was old enough to sit up she has loved sitting next to me in the kitchen and helping me cook.  At only 4 years old she can tell you exactly how to make biscuits and gravy...from scratch.  Likewise vegetable beef soup, roast, and homemade pasta.  I have adorable pictures of her stripped down to her diaper, sitting on the counter and kneading dough.  I learned quickly that it was an absolute necessity to strip her to the skin because the first thing she always did was cover herself in flour.

Today I got to sit back while Brandi and Bella made the pasta from start to finish...it was such a joy to watch. About half way through the long process of taking those little clumps of dough and feeding it through the pasta roller - 10 times through the roller for each clump of dough, Brandi had to stop, but when I stepped in to help Bella finish she sternly told me that SHE could do it by herself...and by George she did!

As we sat at the dinner table we praised Bella on her masterpiece and I must say...it was really quite good!  I can feel my grandma smiling down from heaven as the tradition continues.



Rights, Rants, and Remorse

I am a big believer of the rights as set up in the U.S. Constitution.

I believe in the right of free speech - even when I don't like what some people say.

I believe in the right to bear arms so you can protect your family - because believe me when I say the bad guys will ALWAYS find a way to obtain weapons to harm those you love.

I believe people not only have the right, but an obligation to vote - because it's OUR country, OUR president, OUR representatives, OUR senators...I've always said if you don't do your part and vote then you have no business bitching about what our lawmakers do while in office...you have the right to bitch...but, well...(see item #2)

I believe that all Americans should stand united after the elections. Whether you voted for the (fill in the blank - President, Governor, Representative, Senator, etc) they are the ones representing all of us so while we should respect the office I also think it's important to keep in contact with those in office.  Go to your state capitals, drop into the offices, take time to meet with those representing you and tell them what you want.  Send them emails, tell them your thoughts, what worries you, your hopes for the future.  These people can't adequately represent you if you don't give your input.

Those are my beliefs that I have followed every since I've been old enough to vote, which is why I'm shocked at my behavior tonight.

When my husband came home from work I asked who he had voted for in the presidential race and was a bit surprised to find out it was not the same way that I had voted.  It doesn't matter who each of us voted for or the reasons we voted the way we did...it's our RIGHT to vote the way our heart and conscious leads us to vote.

Instead of acting the way I should have acted, praising him for getting up early so he could vote before work, I blew up...REALLY blew up.  I think my exact words were "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!!!"...and that was followed by a lengthy dissertation on why his vote was the wrong choice, how it was going to affect our family, Brandi's medical insurance...on and on my rant went.

My husband, being the kind, even tempered man he is talked to me in a calm voice and explained why he felt he had to cast the vote he did...and I still bellowed on.

So here's the thing....I HATE people who act like that...who react with narrow viewpoints and unkind words, who lash out at others who have opposing view points...and suddenly I was one of them.

I am chalking my outburst up to the massive dose of steroids I had injected into my body today...steroids have a habit of making me a bit emotional...and by that I mean I get a little nuts.  I'm not using the steroids as an excuse because frankly there is no excusing my behavior, but I do believe it's the reason...because that is not normal behavior for me.

I apologized to my husband...okay, it was about an hour later...but I did give him my most sincere apology...and of course he accepted it - because he's just that good of a man. 

So together we will continue to work together to improve - or at least maintain - life for our family. We will BOTH support our president because like it or not he IS our president.  We have each vowed to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, we will do our best - just as we have always done - to support our country and it's constitution.

This thing I call "D"

 

 

Today begins National Diabetes Awareness Day and I have been putting pen to paper (okay, fingers to keyboard) all day trying to write a witty yet interesting blog about diabetes in general and Type 1 diabetes in particular.  I've scrapped my first three attempts because none of them said what I really felt. Oh, they were full of myths and facts, statistics and antidotes but they didn't really tell you what I wanted to say...what I really think, what I really feel about diabetes and the impact it has had on our family.  I realized finally that I was writing what people expected to hear, not what I really wanted them to know, I was making it more difficult than it was because my true feelings about diabetes can be summed up in two words:

 

DIABETES SUCKS!!!

 

 

I'm not talking about a laid back west coast kind of "diabetes sucks,"  I'm talking about a rage filled, slam your fist into a wall, scream at the top of your lungs with tears streaming down your face "DIABETES SUCKS!"

 

I can't sit here and tell you what it's like to have diabetes, how it feels to stick my finger 10 times a day or stick a needle in my belly 5 or more times a day, because for some reason even though I've basically filled my body with nothing but food with almost no nutritional value and Coke (the soda) and lots of carbs and sugar over the last 20 something years, even though I'm a hundred pounds overweight, for some reason God has blessed me with a perfect freaking pancreas, perfect blood sugar levels and a beyond perfect A1C.  I'm telling you right now there's no justice in life because if anyone deserves to have diabetes because of the shit they've put into their body it's me.

 

What I can tell you is what it's like to see your child, the fruit of your womb, a person you love more than life, the joy of your soul,l stick themselves all those times and give themselves all those shots.  I can tell you what it's like to watch your child lay in a hospital bed in a coma, fighting for her life.  I can tell you how nobody is allowed within 50 feet of her if they have so much as a sniffle, because diabetics are more susceptible to all types of infections and if she gets sick it will mean another hospital stay.

 

I can tell you what it's like for her to be feeling fine in the morning and be hooked up to IVs that same night.  I can tell you what it's like to have your sweet natured daughter, who would cut off her own arm rather than hurt another person scream obscenities and throw things at you because her blood sugars have suddenly dropped and she has no control over herself. I have dozens of stories of conversations I've had with her where she's made absolutely no sense because her brain wasn't getting the food it needed to function.

 

I can tell you what it's like when a group of doctors tell you that she has a rare complication of diabetes and needs an organ transplant to survive, and I can also tell you what it's like to go from having money in the bank, a decent savings account and a 40 hour work week to working 80-100 hours a week and being flat broke because of the medical cost associated with diabetes.

 

I know what it's like to work back to back 18 hour shifts when I'm so exhausted all I really want to do is cry, or when I'm so sick I can barely keep my head up. I also know what it's like when there is no overtime but the meds are still needed so you have no option but to take out a payday loan (at 400% interest) to pay for the insulin that will keep your child alive for another 30 days.

 

I can tell you all about setting your alarm clock and sneaking into your child's room every couple hours while she sleeps to make sure she's not dead, or about the mornings I've woken up in a panic because I slept through the alarm and the terror I felt when I reached her room, afraid of what I might find.

 

I can tell you about selling everything I didn't absolutely need to raise money for a transplant, about planning fundraiser after fundraiser and never being able to take a break from it. 

 

I can tell you about being an advocate for my daughter, about going toe to toe with doctors and nurses and demanding the best care for her.  I can tell you what it's like to sit in a car in the middle of the night and listen as my daughter tells me exactly how she wants her funeral.

 

I can tell you about the inner strength these kids have in general and that my daughter has specifically, about how in spite of having this vicious disease that keeps trying to kill them they just keep on living life to the fullest.

 

And lastly I can tell you how I and every other D-Mom and Dad I know are devoting our lives to not only keeping our beautiful children alive, but to finding a cure so your family never has fully understand this thing I call "D".

 





Walking, Winds, Wrecks and Worrying

Yesterday was a bitch of a day.

I've been sick with a nasty upper respiratory infection for the last couple of days. I had every intention of staying in bed since I was off work, but I woke up bright and early and my first thought was to get up and walk.

"Absolutely NOT!" I reprimanded myself, "you're sick, you need to stay in bed!"  So I got up, made breakfast and went straight back to bed. I tossed and turned for a a while before it finally dawned on me that my body was use to being up during the day and sleeping was not an option.  My mind yelled "WALK" but I beat the thought down and turned on the TV, telling myself that I needed to spend a lazy day in bed...at least until Bella got home.  As soon as the TV came on there was an intro about a woman who lost 160 lbs in a year and had documented her loss by taking pictures of herself in dressing rooms as she bought new clothes.  I listened to the woman talking about her weight loss experience, trying to silence the nagging "walk...walk...walk" playing over and over in my mind, but I had no luck. So giving up to the inevitable I got dressed, asked my son to accompany me, and we went off to walk my favorite trail.

I only intended to walk the first 1.5 miles of the trail then turn around and come back which would make a 3 mile walk (my goal is 3 miles a day for this week) however when we got to the 1 1/2 mile mark I decided to finish the entire trail. Bad decision on my part.  By the time we got half way done on our return trip it was really a challenge to get air and my right foot was hurting so badly I was limping.

We finally finished the walk (4 miles in a little over 1 hour...not my best time by far!) and my son invited me to lunch at Cracker Barrel...I inwardly groaned because although their food is delicious it is not necessarily diet friendly. Since they have no nutritional value menu I settled for something safe - pinto beans.  High in nutritional value and not horrible for calories.

After lunch I was ready to go to bed, but DJ said we had one more quick stop he had to make. Then he pulled into a shoe store and surprised me by buying me two pairs of GOOD walking shoes.  He said he saw how committed I was and it was obvious that my current $19 shoes weren't giving my feet the support they needed. He then followed the purchase up by having me stand on some kind of weird machine that scanned my feet and said I have very low arches and lots of pressure points that were problems. He bought special inserts for my shoes that promised to fix the problem and we were off.

When I got home Hurricane Sandy was just getting ready to hit the east coast so I turned on the TV and started watching the news updates, worrying about all of my friends who were in it's path.
I said many prayers of safety for the millions of people affected, especially those who I loved.

I decided to look through Facebook to see if any of them had posted updates only to see a post that my best friend of 30 years had been in a horrible car accident and had been taken to Barnes Hospital where she was awaiting surgery.

I immediately called her husband who assured me she was okay, but her left heel was badly broken and they were going to have to do surgery to get it back into place.  My first instinct was to get dressed and rush to the hospital but he told me to stay home and he would give me frequent updates. NOT what I wanted to hear, but considering how sick I'd been feeling and the amount of goo I've been coughing up I knew he was right.  So I sat and cried, worried to death about Lynda.

I stayed up late waiting from word on Lynda and my friends in the hurricane, but apparently fell asleep waiting.

By this morning I'd heard from those nearest and dearest to me, and I've been able to talk to Lynda twice. I would have laughed when I talked to Lynda because she was obviously under the influence of some heavy duty pain killers, but she sounded so pitiful I couldn't find anything to laugh about. Our friendship is so much deeper than that of "best" friends, we're each other's yin and yang, we're co-mothers to Brandi...we are ALWAYS there for each other and I feel terrible that I'm not there sitting by her hospital bed. In two weeks she will have a second surgery to put a steel plate in her foot to hold everything together, and you can bet I'll be well and will be there to hold her hand.

So I ask all of you to pray for my friend as she starts to heal. Pray for her family because this is going to be a big financial blow to them.  Pray for all those affected by Hurricane Sandy, and pray that I am able to make it through the next three nights at work...because I still feel like death warmed over.

My Girls

Top Row: Heather, Russo, Brandi
Bottom Row: Amy, Bella and Elma

 

 

 



I believe that your family is not necessarily those with blood ties. I have dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins that I haven't seen in years, in fact some I've never even met, that I have no emotional ties to. However I have sisters and a brother that have no biological connection but are no less my family. I would do anything for them, I would die to save them. I love them with my whole heart.

I was lucky, neither of my biological parents believed in labels such as "step" or "half". Both my biological parents married people who also became my parents and in turn brought me more sisters and brothers. Combined I have a large family which included 5 sisters and 3 brothers (funny sidebar, I have a father and two brothers named Jim or Jimmy)

There is no better example of how this has held true throughout my life than with my children. I gave birth to two children; DJ and Brandi, but I have 4 other daughters that I love as much as if they'd come from my body.

Brandi is my biological daughter and has the strongest spirit and determination of any person I've ever met. She was not a planned pregnancy but I remember taking a pregnancy test at home and then falling to my knees in the bathroom and praying the entire five minutes I had to wait to find out it was positive, and then I just cried tears of joy for another five minutes.  I had a difficult pregnancy with Brandi and was hospitalized often due to hemorrhaging. But even in my womb she was determined to survive and she made her appearance after 60 hours of labor (24 hours at home and 36 hours in the hospital.)

Brandi is a mini me...she looks like me and has my temperament, which has often led to us having heated conversations and more than one door being slammed.  She's 22 now, but she's still my baby.

The first bonus daughter is Amy.  I met Amy when my first husband responded to a call at her home. She was so young, barely a teenager but he knew immediately that I should meet her. I knew the moment I met her that she would be in my life forever and 23 years later she's still here.  Amy has overcome so much in her life but she never lost her determination to be someone I would be proud of...and I am overflowing with pride in Amy.  She served her country in the military, she is a fabulous mother to five children, and she owns her own private investigation company. She's strong and confident...the complete opposite of what she was like when we met. I wish I could take a small portion of the credit but I can't. Amy has worked her ass off to get to where she is today, she's done it all on her own, sometimes falling but always picking herself back up and moving forward.

My second bonus daughter was Heather.  Heather's family moved in just down the street from us several years ago, long before Brandi became ill.  It seemed like if Brandi wasn't at Heather's house then Heather was at ours. I use to sit downstairs and listen to them giggle when Heather would spend the night and it always made my heart smile. I think I realized that Heather had become my bonus daughter the night she and Brandi were getting ready for a school dance at our house. As I helped them get ready and took pictures I looked at the girls and knew that Heather was my girl as surely as Brandi was.

Heather is smart...REALLY smart, and will be graduation from college before long. She's a hard worker, often working two jobs to support herself and pay for school, but even more important she has been a loyal friend to Brandi.

My third bonus daughter is Russo, whose name is actually Alexandria...but she'll always be Russo to me. Heather introduced Russo to Brandi and before long they became best friends.  Brandi and Russo are more than best friends, they're sisters of the heart.  They both lost their fathers when they were young, they were both raised by fantastic, fun mothers (love to you Shelly) and they both are wonderful mothers. Russo just gave birth to her first child last week, little baby Peyton who is absolutely adorable.  From the moment I found out Russo was expecting I laid a grandmother claim on the child.

Russo has the type of loyalty to Brandi - and our entire family - that you only read about in books.  I have no doubt that she would physically rip out her own pancreas and donate it to Brandi if it was possible, their love and bond is that strong.

And finally my fourth bonus daughter, my beloved Elma.

When I first met Elma I didn't like her...at all. As a matter of fact I believe I referred to her as that "crazy Bosnian chick".  She dated my son for over a year and before long I realized that I actually kind of liked having her around, we'd just started off on the wrong foot.  About 6 months into their relationship I started praying that this was the girl DJ would marry, but it wasn't meant to be. I made sure that both she and DJ knew that just because they weren't a couple any longer didn't mean that I loved Elma any less or was any less devoted to her.  I love this girl, with my whole heart I adore her. I knew she loved me too, but I don't know if I understood how deep her love for me was until I was hospitalized with a mini-stroke earlier this year. The minute she heard she rushed to the hospital and the moment she saw me laying in the hospital bed she started sobbing...deep heart wrenching sobs.  It took me about ten minutes to get her calmed down and realize I was fine, but I knew she had reacted exactly how any daughter who loves her mother would react when they fear they're going to lose their parent. She's as devoted to me as I am to her. 

It's funny how life works out, I always wanted six children and thank God, it looks like I got them.