Today I found out that a friend and former neighbor in Smithfield has been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer. My heart breaks at the news. We had kept in touch for over a decade after we moved from Smithfield but had lost touch the last two years and I was thinking of her today and googled her ... only to find out the horrible news.
Here we are ... two women fighting the same monster but doing it differently ... I am doing it privately and Connie's battle is a public one. It is just who we are. My whole life has been about finding the strength within ... hers has been filled with volunteering and public deeds. I cannot imagine that our hopes are very different ... that we live to see our children realize their lives; fall in love and start a family of their own; hold our grandchildren in our arms and be grateful that God has given us the gift of years that this terrible disease tried to take from us.
Why can't we find a cure for this crappy disease? Why? In the 1700s my Scottish ancestor, Cadwallader Colden, wrote to Benjamin Franklin about pokeweed and breast cancer ... looking for a cure even then ... little would he know that some three hundred years later, we are no closer to defeating this monster.
My prayer today is Dear God, thank you for the advances in treatment that has made chemotherapy tolerable enough that I don't have to tell my family ... "just let me die" but God we need a cure for this ... too many good lives are being lost.
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