The old times and the new

7/25/15


     There is hope. I suppose that there is always hope as long as we choose to seek it out, but hope is one of those things which can be easy for one person and hard for the next. And thats what it is to me. When i started this journey, my heart was full, and not of fear, but of hope. I had hope in living, hope in surviving. I still do, just not as much as I once did.

     Recently on another website i published a question and answer book, in hope (ther goes that word again) that i could shed light on the dark room that is the world of my illness. I got immediate responses from about fifty or sixty people asking hundreds of questions. A couple of them stood out in my mind.

Q: "After going through all of this, after seeing what you have seen and experiencing hat you have experienced, how are you still so strong?"

A: "Im not."

Q: "What got you through you journey, and what gets you through now?"

A: "Nico, and now, his memory"

Q: "It seems like at a very young age you had to become independent and take care of yourself, do you find it hard to depend so much on others now?"

A: "Yes, for me that is one of the hardest things ive had to do. To force myself to trust others when every instinct in my body is telling me no one can be trusted. To depend on people now, especially now, especially because i am at my most venerable.... to do that and to do it everyday is incredibly difficult."

Q: "If you could, would you go back and change things so this didnt happen to you?"

A: "You might say im crazy, but no, i wouldnt, because this whole experience has made me a better person so far, i have become more then i was before, i can appreciate every breath i take and marvel at every beat of my heart and know that those things could be snatched from me at any second. That is something that i wish i didnt know, but at the same time it is something that i wouldnt wish upon anyone else, so if getting rid of my disease caused another to get it, then no, i would never change a thing. Also, what i have been through and what i am going through has changed me for the better, it has allowed me to meet people i would never have met otherwise. And though what i am going through is most likely some version of hell, i would not chnage it, because to change it would be to change me, and right now, i quite like who i am."

Tomorrow I am leaving again for two weeks, I had the first round of Photodynamic therapy and now im starting Hyperthermia. Its going to be a rough two weeks and im going to need all the strength i can get. Wish me luck.
Till next time
~A.G