The calm before the storm....

I had a few phone calls in the last few days to straighten out insurance and other issues for our trip to Houston. Everything is progressing rather well (knock on wood). With all the news stories regarding how bad insurance coverage can be, this looks like it might work out very well!

Mary asked me yesterday if I "was getting nervous?". I'm not at all. Not only do I feel great physically, but mentally I am not worried at all (maybe just a little, tiny bit). I am sure as we get closer to traveling to Houston things might change, but right now I am in this very peaceful place mentally.

I look at it this way; the doctors, the medication etc. can, and most likely will, break me down physically. What they cannot take is my mind, my spirit, my hope and my faith. I will beat this, we will vacation in the sand, we will go to Italy, or Ireland or ??? I have no doubt!

The Bracelets are here!

Two boxes were waiting after work last night!
So let the orders begin....come on, you can do it!
[click on the link to the left, print the page, fill
it out and drop the form and payment in the mail]

Thank you very much for those we have already received!

Life is a carousel

I will never claim to be a "poet", but below is something I wrote to Brad. He was two at the time and we were at Disney World. He must have rode the carousel 25 times that day.

After this weekends events, and seeing my friend so torn apart, it seemed appropriate to share this with you.

Carousel (9/98)
The bell rings,
As the music begins,
Your world starts spinning,
when will your innocence end?

Your eyes turn from blue to hazel,
Smiles flash by again and again,
Your life is spinning by me to quickly,
stop the ride so,
I can say I love you.

Give your kids extra hug today, tell a friend that you love them, do something nice for a stranger.......

Putting Things in Perspective…...

I'm numb. I'm without words.
Today has got to be the bottom because I can't imagine the things around me getting any worse.

This time it has nothing to do with me and my situation. One of my best friends in the world lost his daughter today. I only saw him for a minute today...as you can imagine he is devastated.

Suddenly I feel unbelievably lucky. You see, I have a tomorrow, I have a chance, I have Hope.

Hope is the voice God uses to speak to our hearts instead of our heads.

Please, regardless of the fact you don’t know this man, direct your prayers his way. He's in a real bad place right now and he needs the power of your prayers and mine far more than I do.

It may sound strange to read, perhaps not, but I love him like a brother and my heart is in pain for him tonight.

Never place a period in your life where God meant to place a comma.

I love you dude, reach out, I'm here for you!

UPDATES.....

Houston is all set. April 17th we will fly down. Our first meeting is Monday the 18th at 9:30am. We have to plan on being there for 7 consecutive business days but we could be done as early as 3 or 4 so we had to find changable tickets....good thing we had a dear friend come through! We also had some help with a great hotel rate....I am getting a little anxious and it's still over 4 weeks away.

I had an initial meeting this morning as I try to set up a non-profit. I have someone attempting to set up a meeting with an attorney to help create a 501.3c. I also have someone putting together a logo I can use for a website and other marketing materials.
I'll share more ideas at a later time but it's late and I have an early morning date in the basement with the weights....18 pounds down, many more to go! As I told someone today, the weird thing is between the diet and the exercise, I haven't felt this good in years.....

Influences.....

There are two times during the day/week that are hard for me to fight back emotions; at Mass and during my commute back and forth to work.

With the former, I get through it but it is particularly hard during communion. When my mom passed away two years ago I vowed to forever participate in both "the body and blood" in her honor. It's not a requirement of the church to always take the blood, but again I felt it was something I would do for her. I'm not sure how my priest would feel about that?

My mother was raised Catholic and converted to Lutheranism when she married my father. I was the opposite and was raised Lutheran and converted to Catholicism after Mary and I were married. I understand a little of what she sacrificed, this part of Mass is a struggle some weeks. Also, when I pray after communion is it selfish of me to now pray for myself?

Commuting is a completely opposite experience. Where Mass is the "Faith" aspect, commuting is the "Hope" aspect. If idle, my mind wanders and wonders about what lies ahead, this tends to spiral out of control and so I started listening to music almost exclusively during my commute. Most of the time the music helps me look beyond the next 6-12 months, to the "survivor" stage.

As I have mentioned before I am currently in a rut with Kenny Chesney's most recent album. Most of the songs are about escaping to "the island life", getting away etc. I want to go "there" when this is over. Actually I'd really like to go there now with Mary and sit on the beach and watch sunsets, and walk in the surf, and swim in the ocean.....but only if the salt water would wash away this nightmare.........we're going there when this is over, I have no doubts!

WITHOUT COMMENT: Today it has been one month since it was confirmed that I have Prostate Cancer.....

On a happier note, we received our first order for bracelets! Click on the link to your left, print the form and mail today! Or click here
Yes, forever the salesman......

Finally, a Friday bearing good news!

After two of the three previous Friday's brought devastating news, this Friday was differnet.....Hello Texas!

Our insurance company left a message on Friday that we have been approved to go to MD Anderson in Houston! We don't have the details on time frames etc but we have began placing phone calls already this morning.

On a more somber note, I'm not sure where to start with the thank you? So many people have already offered love, support, prayers and offers of assistance. Even though life is relatively normal on a day to day basis at this point, I cannot put into words how reassuring it is to know that you are all there. This summer is sure to very stressful and to know that we won't have to sweat the little things in unbelievably comforting.

1 week down.........

I met several former co-workers after work last night. About 8 years ago we all worked together for 2-3 years. It was a very cool project at the time, we were working on technology that is just now becoming mainstream (Voice Over IP). There was a period of about 2-3 weeks where we were putting in 16+ hour days, eating a lot of take-out and arguing with vendors almost endlessly. In the end it all worked out. We also benefited from it on a personal level by establishing some life long friendships. Last night was fun and before we all knew it three hours has slipped by, we'll have to do it again soon.

The weather in KC is supposed to beautiful this weekend, time for a little spring yard work perhaps! Also, we are having lunch with my uncle from Colorado (who is traveling thru town) and brunch on Sunday with a friend of my dads and the family, who is in town for a convention, it will be very busy weekend!

A friend at work gave me the Lance Armstrong book, "It's not about the Bike". I started reading it the other night and what he went through was amazing. In the course of about 10 days he went from being healthy, to finding out he had cancer, to having part of his manhood surgically removed, to brain surgery and finally he started intense chemotherapy - all that in the span of less than two weeks. Remarkable! I'm only about halfway through - it's a good book and I'd recommend it to any of you. But after reading it, it begs the question, "would you rather just be hit with cancer and get it on with the "cure" like Lance? Or would you rather go through this, long, drawn out process like me?" At this point I'm searching for an answer?

Our current state of normalcy

Life has returned to "normalcy", as much as that is possible right now. As I have mentioned previously, we are in a wait and see mode right now.

The medications are doing their thing and we are waiting for a response from our insurance carrier regarding going to MD Anderson for consultation and possible treatment. We are almost 100% sure that we'll go regardless, we just need wait for this answer first.

The bracelets have been ordered, they should arrive in 3-4 weeks, we're going to sell them for $2.00. The goal is to recoup the investment, fund the production of another 1,000 AND make a donation of about $500 to the Prostate Cancer Foundation. After that, the next donation will be larger and we'll order more and so on......
The color is sort of royal blue and they will be embossed with "FAITH - LOVE - HOPE - WIN"
Stay tuned.....

The frequency of my updates will likely taper off for a while as there is just not a lot happening right now.