I originally posted this on New Year's Eve, 12/31/11. I wrote it as our friends, the Vargas', arrived to celebrate a new year coming...a new chance at happiness and prosperity...Their beautiful daughter, Tiffany had battled leukemia for years, and their financial situation had become desperate. We all toasted and prayed for a new beginning that night, but stupid cancer appeared in Nury, Tiffany's mother. On Christmas Day, 2012, with Tiffany in remission, her mother was lost to cancer. Somehow, this feels like an important post to pull first from the archives, so here you go...
As I count down the final hours of 2011, I feel compelled to address all the previous hours somehow...wrap them up in a meaningful package...make sense of them..So painfully obvious is the fact that there is no sense in what we have faced and fought and endured this year. No sense in what we will continue to face and fight and endure for many years to come. In 2011, Nick, our handsome, athletic, intelligent son was diagnosed with brain cancer. Brain CANCER. I still have to say it over and over to try to grasp that, and yet, it still doesn't seem entirely real. I heard the words in the hospital. I laid with him in his hospital bed and swelled with pride and awe when he told me "I think this is a life changing experience, but I'm strong." I've driven him daily to 6 weeks of radiation. Held him down in clinic to have his port accessed while he screamed and twisted away from the pain. I've listened endlessly in clinic while other children wail against the needles. I've endured the torturous waiting for MRI results and slept too many nights in a hospital chair while the poison that may cure him pumps through Nick's veins and makes him sick. He IS strong. He is beautiful. He is my inspiration every day to do more and be more than I ever thought I would have to be. Also, in 2011, my best friend from high school, the mother of 3 small boys, found out she has an aggressive form of breast cancer. She's endured a mastectomy, chemo, baldness, fear, pain, but somehow, she's courageous and funny, and ironically, the former hair model is gorgeous as a baldy! In 2011, families lost children and mothers and fathers to cancer. Many more of us have lost our incomes, even our homes, as we try to contend with the rigors of cancer treatment and the mounting medical bills, prescription expenses, babysitting fees, traveling expenses...All of us have lost our innocence. Up until the time you hear CANCER as it applies to you, you innocently believe there will be tomorrow, or next week, or next year to make amends, be a better friend, work, love, live. Once you hear CANCER, nothing is sure or certain. After you hear CANCER, you lose friends. You gain friends. You learn to surrender pride and accept that this is your season to take and be tended to. You learn who will be your givers and who were just takers all along. That surprises you. You lose who you were before you heard CANCER. You have to figure out who you are with cancer...and hopefully, after cancer. You celebrate small victories and move from day to day in grateful celebration that you are there...just that you are there to see today...There is beauty in having a stripped down life. There is beauty in strength and courage. Cancer sucks, really sucks...robs your life of so much even if it doesn't steal your life completely. But as we are slowly learning, it also reveals some glorious and generous people, new relationships, appreciation, and a level of faith that we may not have enjoyed without the cancer. 2011 was the worst year I've ever endured. 2011 was the worst year our family has endured. But it wasn't all bad. And it can't be summarized, packaged up neatly and put away on a shelf. It's a "to be continued" episode...right into 2012, 2013, and beyond...We welcome 2012 with hope and faith and love and a resolve to continue fighting cancer and it's collateral damage in our lives and the lives of anyone else we are able to help.
