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by The Maher-Pendry Family (Author), Ksenia Logavaia (Illustrator)
On October 3, 2016, 8-year-old Graysen Pendry suffered a debilitating concussion and neck injury after being hit in the head with a soccer ball. In the 3 months after the incident, she went to dozens and dozens of doctors and therapy appointments, including 3 MRI's, 2 runs to the emergency room and one very scary middle-of-the-night CAT scan. No one could figure out how to unlock her excruciating chronic headaches, neck and back pain. For 4 months, she couldn't be in class longer than 10 minutes at a time. She missed an entire year of gym class. She had to give up singing and music because the one thing that gave her so much joy now only made all the pain worse. And because the concussion threw off her balance, she fell and broke her ankle. It was a very rough 9 months before she was officially cleared of the concussion and allowed to go back to just being a kid.
During that time, Graysen's family and friends felt their lives changed, too. This is what happens when someone in your family gets sick. Everyone is asked to make changes, even a new puppy whose sole purpose in life is to make people happy. Suddenly, no one is happy. And sometimes it's really hard to sort out all the feelings that come along with changes that are forced on you.
After Graysen was cleared from her concussion, her family was so grateful she was well again, but they all realized, from a common cold or flu to very, very scary cancer, there were still a lot of people with a sick family member. They decided to share their story, so anyone else who might be feeling the same way would know they weren't alone.
