It has been some time since I touched base with you all and as we had a momentous occasion this week I felt it was time let you know how we and more importantly Sofia are doing. Two years ago merely days before our lives were forced down Mr. Frost's other path we purchased for Sofia ballet gear and signed her up for classes at her insistence. The bag that had these dreams lay dormant in our house through a move and several replacements only to finally be returned by Amy a few months ago but not for credit but instead for larger sizes.

Eighteen months since we first tried we entered Sofia into ballet and last week she had her first recital at a local theater, The Lobero. It meant more than you could know to see her up on that stage with several of her friends all making their best efforts to show their balance and follow the instructors direction. We couldn't help but shed tears of joy at the site of our little girl being "normal" all dressed up including makeup acting as a jingle bell.

We had our routine quarterly MRI this same week down at CHLA but this was to be no normal MRI because it marks nearly two years from the resection of her tumor which is a momentous marker in the brain tumor world elevating a person to a different statistical level, that of very rare for tumor or cancer reoccurrence. As usual we started our trek at 6am down to CHLA and arrived on time and instead of the normal delays prior to her getting her "pokey" of the anesthetic delivering needle she was being brought into the scan a mere thirty minutes from arrival.

Amy and I settled in for the usual ninety minutes of waiting until she is done and wheeled into recovery only this time it would be different. After two hours Amy checked in and was told it would be another thirty minutes. We waited and still no word so we checked back in and they said it would be another thirty minutes so we waited. At moments like this beliefs are tested. While the engineer in me knows that the reason this MRI is taking twice as long as it ever has is because of a technical issue with the machine or the output while the father in me that has been on this path starts looking into the dark thickets of the path and letting my mind go to places it should not.

Amy has been crying now for a solid thirty minutes overcome with the thoughts of what has been and I am trying to stay detached but finding it extremely difficult to focus on my book on cosmology. We finally go to the check in and ask where our daughter is when we are informed she is in recovery and they have been waiting for her to wake from her drug induced sleep before calling us. We both go in which has never been allowed as one parent is the rule and attempt to raise her from the sleep. We want to ask why it took so long to perform the MRI looking at the nurses but we know they won't tell us and we really don't want to know at this point, ignorance and Sofia are all I want to embrace at this point, the truth can wait.

We see several of the other children wake and begin their exodus out of the recovery room to whatever destination awaits them. We see the anesthesiologist check in several times waiting for her to wake so he can sign her out, his shoes squeak every time he turns around on the floor noticing she is not yet awake. She starts to wake and slowly we get her to rise with the taste of Sprite from a straw. The shoes squeak a final time as we are released from recovery and make our way upstairs to check in and face the results of the delay.

Due to the length of the scan we find out that our oncologist has gone to lunch and we have to wait an additional forty five minutes for his afternoon session before we can be admitted to a waiting room for our consult. Dejected I decide I can't wait in this holding cell and we get a pager to at least walk the hospital as I have been carrying Sofia for the last twenty minutes and movement makes the time go faster. As we get to the elevator we see our oncologist nurses assistant and she asks if we got the email. We look dumbfounded as we received no email and she informs us that the scan came back clean and this information was sent to us nearly an hour ago.

It feels like I am floating, I can feel the tears float down my face, I can no longer hear my breathing and I notice that Sofia is snoring on my chest. We walk downstairs and enter the outside garden and I just stand there eyes closed, face in the sun holding my daughter sobbing tears of joy. I have cried many times on this path but this is the first time in nearly two years I have shed tears like this and the last was the first time I was able to hold her after the tumor resection surgery when I told the nurse she would have to sedate me to get me to release her. We cried one more time upstairs with her oncologist as we all realized we had made the first milestone past discovery which is the two year mark. He informed us the study she was in has met its statistical goal, was closed and he looked at the preliminary results and these results he hoped would finally be enough to put into serious doubt the practice by nearly all in the child brain tumor community to irradiate children under the age of 5 exposing them to risk of developmental issues.

I have never been a fan of Christmas after the obligatory early years of my childhood but it has become one of my favorite holidays due to the birth of my children and now I have received the best gift a father could ever ask for! We are not off the path but have reached the first peak and the view from here is just simply breathtaking!

I want to thank each of you for your thoughts, prayers, energy and faith during this journey as the poem says this has been the road not taken by choice but rather by chance and your help and love on this path has made all the difference.

I sincerely hope this holiday season brings you all joy and love!

Zeb and Amy Pena