Oh, damn it.

I just got a text message from my sister: "I guess you didn't get my email. (Niece) is going in for surgery tomorrow."

So, I called. Obviously. My sister told me that my 7 year-old niece is going to have three moles removed from her scalp tomorrow morning... They'll require stitches, and the doctors will have to shave her head in a couple of places to remove them.

She's scared, because she's never had stitches and she's afraid it will hurt. And how that breaks my heart, I can't even say.

The moles will be sent in for tests, and then we'll know more in 14 or more days. I stopped listening after 'fourteen' because seriously? Fourteen days to hear back about whether or not a little girl has cancer? So I don't know how many more than fourteen days we might have to wait. I do know that skin cancer runs in my sister's father's side of the family (we have the same mother) and that my sister has had to have several moles removed in her life, "just to be safe." I know that skin cancer is the leading cause of death in her father's family. I know my sister is afraid, and trying not to be.

I'm trying really hard not to furiously pepper big, terrified F bombs all over this. I just found out, and the baby is sleeping, and I'm trying to work my mind around the fact that we live in a world where things like this happen so I wanted to write about it... I wanted to try to work it out, and I kind of need help to do that. I know that bad things happen, and they happen to sweet, sweet little girls. Maybe not this one, though, I keep telling myself to shut up and remember that we don't know anything yet.

Let me tell you something about this girl. She giggles CONSTANTLY. I mean that seriously. It's constant. At first it comes off as a nervous habit, but if you know her you know that she laughs all the time because she's just that happy. She's really, really happy... And she's a cuddle bug. The child is never happier than when she's in someone's arms, or holding your hand, or sitting on your lap. She loves everything and everyone SO MUCH. She's a sweet, darling little girl, and she's scared right now because she's going to do something very hard tomorrow and she doesn't want it to hurt.

I don't want her to hurt. I don't want this to be the kind of world where sweet little girls have to do scary things.

I don't mean to be one of those people that goes onto their tiny little blog and asks the four readers she has to send happy thoughts to a stranger, but please... Please, if you pray, could you do that? If you have a spare happy thought, could you send it? It can just be tiny, and general, aimed at all of the nameless, sweet little girls out there. Because good thoughts can never hurt, and prayers are never things that can do any harm, right? And she's just so little. She's just a little girl.

(Look at that, two posts in one day. Wish it had just been the one, but I'm kind of panicked and The Boy isn't here to talk to me and did I mention she's just little? And our mother died of cancer? And oh, damn it.)