Lipstick on the Rim: A Mother’s Instinct: Emese Opens Up About Every Parent’s Worst Nightmare, Going With Her Gut, the Power of Positivity, Sharing, Community, and More

By Mollysims.com

You may know by now that Emese has been through quite a year. Her six-year-old daughter, Grace, was diagnosed with Lymphoma last summer. It’s a testament to both of their strength how well Emese has led Grace with optimism and poise. Grace has forged ahead like the absolute rockstar she is. A year later, Emese is ready to tell you all the story of what happened, how it started with a gut instinct, a mother’s instinct, and why it’s an instinct worth following like your North Star. Get multiple opinions, don’t give up, keep your head up high, and know that there is strength in numbers. Sharing her story has opened her up to a whole new world of helping others. While this may not be an episode solely dedicated to beauty, we thought it was one of our worthier messages to share.

[Emese] On Trusting Her Gut Instinct

“When you looked at my daughter, she was healthy, happy, cartwheeling, no fever, nothing. I noticed that one of her eyes was narrower than the other, and I felt like something was off. I took her to the doctor who said it was probably an effect of her six-year-old molars coming in and to visit a dentist. The dentist recommended seeing an ENT because there seemed to be a blockage in her sinus. The ENT told us that in order to see what was exactly wrong with her sinus, we needed to get a CT scan. I remember watching her step into the CT machine and I just felt that something was off. Later that evening, the doctor called and told me that my daughter had a mass in her sinus and that it was cancer. I was frozen, sitting on the floor, unsure of what I was hearing. She was put on an antibiotic steroid to bring the swelling down, and we were off to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The first scan she got at the Children’s Hospital showed visible improvement in her sinus, so we were told to enjoy our summer, relax, and that we will get better scans in a few months. Once the swelling returned, we got the mass biopsied, and on August 15 she was officially diagnosed with B-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Lymphoma. She was the picture of health which is the scariest thing. It’s not something you can see and immediately diagnose. It was an instinct.”

[Emese] On The Power of Community

“There is a community that forms when you share your story. The support and positive energy that you can give someone who is going through something like this is one of the most important things you can do for them. I cannot believe what my daughter has gone through in the last 10 months, and it amazes me because she still manages to get up and keep on going. Her physical reactions to chemo seemed superhuman, and I can only attribute this to the power of positive thinking during this process. I believe in the power of prayer. It doesn’t matter what or who you believe in, but I trust that other people sending positive energy your way has its benefits. During the hard hump of our journey, the thing that made my heart burst the most was reading messages from people that I have never met who said they were rooting for my girl.”