Tricia cried beside her two-year-old daughter’s bed.
Doctors had told her that Ashleigh, diagnosed with a tectal glioma at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, might not live to see her 5th birthday. They placed a shunt to drain the fluid accumulating in her brain, and all that remained was to wait.
For years, every quarterly MRI was a coin toss. At age 4, the tumor progressed and she began chemotherapy: three oral medications and two intravenous doses every six weeks, for an entire year. Ashleigh went into remission and never came out of it.
Today she is 26, completed her graduate studies at the University of Central Missouri, survived a hurricane and a car fire, and this year married Kenny. Together they work helping people in need around the world. “I hope they know there is hope”, she now says, with the same faith that sustained her parents that night in the hospital.