JACKSON, Wis. _ In June 2013, when she was 8 years old, Lily Dove turned gray.
She hadn't been feeling well. Ordinarily robust and athletic, she had become lethargic and, from time to time, sick to her stomach. Initially, her mom, Erin, figured Lily caught a bug. But then color seemed to drain from Lily's cheeks.
Erin has told the story of what happened next many times. Telling it again makes her cry.
Erin took Lily to their pediatrician. Lily's two sisters came along: Lily's identical twin, Bailey, and her older sister, Maddie, who was 10.
The doctor thought that, perhaps, Lily was anemic, and she ordered blood work. It took about an hour. And when the results came back, the doctor suggested that Lily join her sisters in the waiting room so she could talk, one on one, with Erin.
That's the memory that still stirs Erin, that moment she sent Lily to the waiting room. She and the doctor talked. At the beginning of the conversation, Erin was one person and at the end of the conversation, she was someone else. In the course of those moments, life as she knew it changed.
Lily, the doctor told her, had leukemia.
