only "bummed"?
As I've mentioned before I read
Confessions of a CF Husband on a daily basis. I must admit the past few days I've been rubbish about following most blogs because of craziness at work with summer students and a lack of home computer, but I went over to the site this morning and found
this post. I cannot imagine being in Tricia's shoes. For those of you who don't follow the story, here are a few lines from what Nate wrote:
"
Tricia's lymphoma in her lungs did not respond well to the meds over the past five weeks . . . I've been explaining to you that the chemo Tricia had been receiving was not the heavy duty stuff...CHOP is. CHOP is the stuff that you hear about that comes with a lot of potential side affects . . . Tricia will receive her first treatment tomorrow . . . A few weeks after that second treatment, they'll reevaluate to determine if the cancer is responding as hoped for. If so, she'll receive four additional treatments every three weeks, for a total of six over the next eighteen weeks. If, after the first two treatments, her cancer is not responding, Tricia is in serious trouble . . . Needless to say, we're both very bummed tonight. Tomorrow is a new day, and I'm sure we'll be more optimistic, but tonight we're very discouraged."
Bummed is the word that Nate used, I don't think bummed even begins to explain how I'd feel. Tricia & Nate are just so strong. I hope that should I ever be in a similar situation I think that if I had 1/4 of their strength I'd be doing really well. I suppose it helps to have such a wonderful & supportive family and that I know they have! If you have 3 seconds to spare maybe say a quick prayer that these new rounds of CHOP will work better for Tricia.
Labels: nate's blog
Praying for Tricia, her family & donor families around the world
So I just read on
Nate's blog that they've gotten a call about a possible set of lungs for her transplant - I cannot begin to think how she & Nate are feeling right now - here I am thousands of miles away & my entire bus ride home tonight all I could think about was how exciting this could be if this set of lungs are the right ones & how disappointing it could be if they're not the right match. I also thought about the poor person who had to pass away in order for these lungs to be available.
I honestly cannot think of any monetary donation which could compare to the selflessness of people who donate organs, which is why once again I'm going to ask all of my readers to consider becoming an organ donor. If you don't feel you can become an organ donor, then please donate some cash to help Nate's
Personal CF Great Strides Fundraising Goal. He figured if every person who visits his blog every day were to donate just $1, he would more than double his goal of $10,000 - which is just awesome. When he posted that he was at 20% of his goal & when I just checked it a few minutes ago I realised he's reached 40%, but that's still means that everyone who visits hasn't given JUST $1 . . . I think donating a dollar is something EVERY one of my readers can afford. Please give it a thought, you probably have $1 in your pocket in change, which you could spare.
And if you can't be an organ donor, can't give $1, then you at least can spend a few seconds praying for Tricia, her family & don't forget the donor's family!!
Thanks & have a good Wednesday!
Update 23.29 BST: Just read that the transplant is a go for Tricia - how exciting!!!Labels: donations, nate's blog, organ donation
Donate Life Month Starts TODAY
No, this is not an April Fool's Day joke by any means, it's actually
Donate Life Month. To quote their website, "
National Donate Life Month was established in 2003. Every day in April, people across the U.S. make a special effort to celebrate the tremendous generosity of those who have saved lives by becoming organ, tissue, marrow, and blood donors and to encourage more Americans to follow their fine example."
I became aware of this thanks to Nate's blog
Confessions of a CF Husband where he speaks about not only his wife who is waiting for a double lung transplant, but also about a dear friend of his who passed away suddenly & who's eyes were donated.
Check it out here if you have a few seconds.
Labels: donate life month, nate's blog, organ donation
What would PS do?
So some of you might have visited
Nate's blog once or twice before, and maybe some of you are even following the story on a daily basis (like I am). Yes, I know there are thousands, if not millions, of blogs out there on the web to read, how do you chose which ones to follow & which not to you ask??!?!
For me that's easy, I follow only a few blogs on a regular (meaning daily) basis. I think all the blogs I visit are listed in my side bar, but not all of those are daily reads. The reason I mentioned Nate's blog earlier & why the title reads, "what would PS do?" is because after following what he tells of his story and I'm sure there is a lot more which he doesn't/cannot write about, I find myself throughout the day wondering what his wife is doing. Her name is Patricia Suzanne, aka PattySue or as you may see her called in the blog Tricia. I don't think for long, just a few seconds whilst pushing myself onto the tube in the morning, or when worrying about an issue at work, or even most recently tonight, when pushing myself to go to the gym.
Let me try to set the scene, though this maybe one of those hard to explain kinda things. It was a typical Monday at work, on the whole nothing to difficult, I put placed in charge of sorting out the ID card & 4 digit pin codes with our safety officer, IC's safety officer, IC's BSF 2 staff members (who I personally think are about as useful as tits on a bull to put it nicely), and the counter-terrorist police unit . . . at first I was very proud to be put in such a position - little me in charge of sorting this out with all this "big wigs", until I realised this was a much harder task than I thought it was going to be - my quick & easy solution was not so easy, which means it's not a quick fix either . . . back to the drawing board with that one tomorrow. But back to my point, at the end of the day, I was sorta feeling beaten by the first of what I can now see as being many meetings with all these people (and anyone who's ever had a meeting with more than 2 people understands how hard it is to try to get multiple people's schedules to match, try doing it with 3 from one institute, 3 from another, and 2-3 from a police branch in central London - you guessed it, NOT fun!) Sorry I got off track again. As I was saying, I was feeling a bit down, came home, had dinner, was checking my emails & debating if I should go to the gym or not. Thinking I could go tomorrow before work, which I know is never really a good plan since I have a rather large dislike for getting up in the morning, so waking up extra early to go to the gym is a ruddy bad idea!! I finally got up, put on my gym kit & walked over. About half way through the work out, I was feeling exhausted, I was wondering why I'd decided to put myself through this & suddenly whilst on the leg curl machine (I think my most hated machine at the mo) just as I was about to give up at rep 7 of my 2nd set (I'm suppose to do 3 sets of 15) suddenly I thought, "what would Tricia do?"
At first the other half of my brain said, "nothing she can't go to the gym"
To which the other half of me said, "but if she could go to the gym, she wouldn't give up, do the next 8 for her, since she can't"
So I pushed the next 8 out & went back to lunges & swats, before ending back on the leg curl machine for my last set. I cannot lie, I thought about skipping out, stretching and just grabbing my jacket so I could leave - I mean who would notice, who would care?!?!? But instead, thanks to Tricia & her strength to fight something way harder than 15 leg curls, I got on the machine & did all 15!!
Probably some of you are thinking so what - you finished your workout, big deal and maybe some of you are so bloody bored you stopped reading a few paragraphs ago. What I'm hoping you got out of my rather long winded stream of consciousness writing is that we take a lot for granted on a daily basis - it's not until you can't do something that you realise how lucky you are. I would bet that Tricia would give anything to have been on that machine doing leg curls (well maybe not them since I know how much they suck, but I'm sure she'd have loved to be at the gym tonight with me!)
Just take a second to reflect on the things you did today, what have you taken for granted? Imagine if you were in a hospital & couldn't have done those things - aren't you the least bit thankful for what you were able to do today?
So I'm going to try to make a pact with myself I'm going to call it my March Challenge (since it's just round the corner really) every day I'm going to try to be more thankful & try to take fewer things for granted. When I get pissed off about something at work - I'm going to try to be thankful I have a job. When I get frustrated at the airport b/c the plane is delayed - I'm going to think of those who can't get on a plane. I hope you can all join me in trying to be a bit more conscious of all the things around us that we have to be thankful for.
THANK YOU PATTY SUE!!!!!!!!!I hope this post makes sense, since it's now 10.15pm, I'm not going to re-read it.
Labels: march challenge, nate's blog, remembering, thoughts
