My daughter, Amberly Moniq'ue, is seven years old--yet she's had to endure more pain, more suffering during the past three years than what most people have gone through their entire lives.

Amberly enjoyed good health for the past four years of her life--never has been in the hospital, never set foot in a doctor's office except for her annual physicals or to get her required shots--; then came that time when she started having blinding headaches and worsening vision.

It seemed to come out of nowhere. We became alarmed when one morning she told us that she couldn't see; we immediately rushed her to the emergency room, where she was admitted to the hospital for tests, to see what was going on.

It was soon apparent just how sick our daughter was: she had an MRI, which revealed a large mass in her brain. When a biopsy was performed (under general anesthesia), the doctors delivered the devastating news: the tumor was malignant, or cancerous; it was also inoperable. The diagnosis: death within six months.

After the diagnosis, Amberly's health quickly deterioated. As the tumor spread, her vision disappeared quickly, and she lost her ability to walk. She now had to use a wheelchair, and she now has seizures due to the tumor pressing on her cranial nerves. It is terrifying to see her having to go through so many hospitalizations. During the past year she's been hospitalized at least five different times.

Amberly is a beautiful little girl with big brown eyes, long, luxurious brown hair, and a dimpled smile; yet lately she hasn't felt like smiling. She has blinding headaches, and she is often sick to her stomach. She vomits a lot, and she also has the seizures I described above, terrible, violent ones that shake her entire body and leave her gasping for every breath.

Whenever she has one of her seizures she has to be seen in the ER because there's no telling what her seizures might do to her.

Amberly is the light, the joy of our life; and it tears us to pieces to see her having to go through so much. She is our only child, and the thought of her dying is more than we can bear. We didn't expect this to happen to her; we didn't expect us to be making funeral plans for a seven-year-old; we didn't plan outliving our child.

Sometimes people get mad at us because they are tired of hearing about her plight; yet people don't understand what we are going through. Some people have been cruel; they've gone as far as wishing her dead. It's really awful, how people stare at her, or make nasty comments about her situation. Don't they know that she doesn't deserve all this grief; she's suffered enough as it is; why only add to a little dying girl's pain??

It doesn't seem right!

Amberly is currently in the hospital; she is fighting more nonstop seizures. Just today she had four seizures in less than five hours. She is now in a drug-induced coma, so she can rest, and we are past the point of exhaustion. We don't know what's around the bend for her, and to tell you the truth, it's scaring us halfway to death!

I will be writing in here again, with more to Amberly's story; I will be writing about how some people have opened their hearts in order to make her life more pleasant, more memorable. Life hasn't been all bad for her, but still--living with a dying child is something I wouldn't wish on anybody!