(posted by Kristi Corley)

This year has been a bit rough in one area. Alex’s best friend Ellie Skees has been begun a health battle of her own, being diagnosed with Stage-4 Neuroblastoma Cancer. Ellie’s family charts her progress daily in her blog, www.ellieskees.blogspot.com, so please pray for Ellie and her family. Ellie’s mom, Sarah, is one of my very good friends.

We’ve always known that the struggles that Alex has gone through would one day be used for others. Little did we know that already at the age of 7, Alex would be sharing her health experiences — and that it would be with her very best friend.

Alex has been to the hospital a number of times to visit Ellie, and each time has never been scared of the wires, tubes, machines, etc. because they are all too familiar to Alex. Many times Alex would point to Ellie’s IV and say things like, “ya, those things can bother ya, can’t they.” And one day, right as Alex arrived into Ellie’s room, Ellie immediately perked up and said, “Alex!!!! We have the exact same surgery spot!” (pointing to the spot where they placed the port site for Ellie’s chemo, which was the same spot where Alex had her VNS implanted).

One day I received a phone call from Sarah, asking if Alex could come to visit Ellie. Sarah had just explained to Ellie that because of her chemo, that she would be losing her hair. And as you would expect, Ellie was quite upset, and was concerned that people would laugh and make fun of her. Sarah began to compare Ellie to Alex and her health issues, asking if Alex is laughed at or made fun of because of her seizures and also her hand deformity.  Ellie immediately said “NO!! We love Alex and we never make fun of her!” So Sarah explained that her friends would also love her and never make fun of her.

I explained the whole hair loss to Alex and she immediately came up with some ideas to help Ellie feel better, wanting to go out and buy matching hats, and then came the idea to cut her own hair so that she could give some of her hair to Ellie…

So about 2 weeks ago, Alex had a special hair-cutting appointment and cut off about 7 inches of her hair. And now one of Ellie’s friends is planning on attatching Alex’s hair to a little hat, to have the hair extentions coming out from the bottom of the hat!!! We are very proud of Alex and the compassion she has in her heart.