I received the following note from a long-time friend of mine. We recently hooked back up via Facebook (isn’t Facebook great?) She saw that I was training for the Ironman through Team In Training, and shared the following:
My dad was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma in 1994. After receiving his initial treatment, he suffered a stroke and was confined to a wheelchair. For the next 13 years, he fought a brave battle against his disease, at the same time learning to live with his new disability. He rarely complained and faced his chemos and obstacles with humor and optimism. My mother tirelessly cared for him, allowing him to spend his final years at home with the assistance of CNAs who visited every morning for two hours. She bathed him, toileted him and gave him the best quality of life she could. When his body started to fail in June of 2007, we made the decision to withdraw treatment and helped my dad enter eternity with the assistance of the wonderful people of hospice. He had a peaceful and loving death, surrounded by his family and knowing he would always be loved and missed.
This is who I’m doing this for. Stories like this will help me as I train during this winter. Please let me know if you have any stories to share, so that I can have your loved ones’ spirits in the wind at my back.
Sandy: I am behind you 100%. My maternal aunt died of leukemia back when I was 17 (I am 50 now). She agreed to be a guinea pig for medication trials because she figured she didn’t have anything to lose and only something to gain by possibly helping others with the same hideous disease. In the end, the medications caused her to lose her mind before she lost her battle for life. Thank you, for taking on such a monumental endeavor for such a worthy cause. You are my hero(ine)! From this experience, you will gain so much more than you can imagine. You GO, GIRL!
I learned so much about the diseases we are battling at the kick-off yesterday. The “main guy” said one thing that I think is REALLY true – that if we can get a handle on these blood cancers, then likely the others will fall. Wow re your aunt. Do you have a picture you can send? I want to put as many as I can on the website – even if you scan one in. I would really like to have faces (like Flo’s dad) in my mind, especially when I start feeling “odd” asking for the charitable donation. That IS why I’m doing this – and having folks’ faces on my mind REALLY helps me. I’m considering making a collage for a shirt, depending on how many people tell me stories – to get a collage done up on something like Shutterfly and screening it onto a singlet.