There is strength in hope

The day after Miles' birth and passing, Dr. F (the perinatologist I had been seeing) came up to the hospital to visit me.  She sat at the foot of my hospital bed and cried.  She told me how sorry she was, that she was wrong, that she had given us false hope.  MRI's are 'never' wrong, she didn't know how they were so off on Miles' diagnosis.  Miles was diagnosed with several different possible tumors during my pregnancy, but after the MRI and several detailed ultrasounds it was determined that he for sure had a neoblastoma.  We met with the surgeon weeks before his arrival to lay out our plan of action.  When Miles was born, they were not able to just decompress the tumor as they had planned, but had to remove the entire thing to have any chance of stabilizing him.  Once it had been removed they realized that their diagnosis had been wrong.  It was not a neoblastoma, but an extremely rare condition called 'fetus in fetu' (there are less than 100 recorded cases of this condition, it is estimated that is happens in 1 in 500,00 pregnancies.  Essentially, in the very very early stages of the pregnancy the fertilized egg begins to divide to form indentical twins, but instead of separating, one of the twins gets trapped inside the other one and doesn't develop properly, but still grows and uses the outer twin's blood supply and nutrients acting like a parasite and causing problems for the twin who is it's 'host' ).  Dr. F apologized over and over for not knowing what it was until it was too late.  I asked her what she would have done different, if she would have changed his treatment.  She told us that she would not, she just would have prepared us, she would have told us that his chance of survival was almost none.  We would probably have delivered him earlier and planned for his passing.  In hindsight I am glad that they were wrong.  They couldn't have saved him, and not having hope would have made those weeks leading up to his arrival so hard to bear.  Yes, it is hard to think of him and the hopes that we had for him, enjoying his siblings, playing ball with his daddy, all of the things you imagine for you little boy.  But during those weeks, having hope gave me strength.  I fought for him and I wasn't giving up.  Because I had hope I have no regrets, we did everything we could hoping for the best.  It didn't change the outcome, but it gave me strength.  I am grateful that we at least had hope.