My grand watermelon adventure of 2011 did not succeed. I had blooms and fruit, but the fruit did not yield solid watermelon flesh throughout. There was a spoonful of edible melon flesh in the fruits that were produced, but not the way I hoped they would turn out. Seems I may have planted them too late and in the heat of the summer, their growth was stunted. But, what I needed to know is what I know now. Next year, I know when I need to plant them and how to care for them so that they yield what I hope for.
Tomorrow morning, a friend that I made in the previous year will be admitted to the Bone Marrow Unit at MCV here in Richmond. Wondering how her evening is going tonight, brought back some of my anxiety of my "Bone Marrow Eve," but I also remember the specifics of that evening included a great dinner with some friends, a drop off of a patented "bag of fun" to take to the hospital with me and shopping to get one more shirt to wear while in the hospital.
The next day was a big day. Probably the most significant day of the whole adventure. One of the thoughts in my mind was, "Here goes. This will either work or it won't." The only other day that was similar was the first day of chemo. Coincidentally, the same person gave me a ride to both events.
As the weather turns to be more like the days before my diagnosis and as the college football team I follow turned in a performance on Saturday very similar to a performance I witnessed from them a few weeks prior to being diagnosed in 2008, sometimes the head remembers how those days felt. However, since I now have a healthy appetite and it isn't painful to digest food at this point, it's all good.
The other week, I was talking to another person who is being treated for lung cancer. He's about my age and his diagnosis has a time frame associated with it. As we talked, I told him, "None of us do know when we will die. However, all of us can live every day until then."
I told him that my feeling is that a cancer patient has to deal with two cancers. The physical cancer is the one that is being attended to by doctors and nurses and the patient makes decisions based on the information being presented to them. That cancer may or may not be cured.
The other cancer is the one that goes on in the mind.
"That one," I told him, "is curable. You are, and will be, surrounded by a host of angels in this world that can and will help you with that."
It's not necessary that you know the names of the people I write about in this blog post, but it would be cool if you could think about them and send a few "Godspeeds" their way.
Maybe then, someday when they look back on the seeds that were planted for them, they will be able to share the fruits of their harvest.
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