Even though it’s not...It’s contagious

Posted Date: : May 22, 2008 11:22 AM
Though it's not a disease that I can catch like a cold, to me cancer has become contagious.

I don't mean this in a negative way by any means, nor do I mean it like in the way that people feared AIDS in the 80's and am going to get people to flee at the sight of a head-wrap or a shiny bald head. NO.

What it means to me is that this FIGHT has become contagious.

I grew up with Cancer all around me and yet the reality of it was still so very far away. Grandparents, Great-aunts and uncles, all those distant relatives, who all seemed so old and silver-haired. Varying forms of cancers that I couldn't comprehend at such young age, starting at 9 years old.

I remember going to wakes and not knowing what was going on, just being sad. I don't remember seeing them go through treatment, just seeing less of them. I didn't know the severity. I didn't see the pain, the changes in their day to day lives.

I saw them on Holidays. Wielding their cheek pinches and once-a-year gifts. I was too young to notice the sallowness in their skin, or the tired look in their eyes. The weight loss, the hair loss if they had it.

The closest hit was my neighbor, my Grand Peg I called her. Closest person to a grandparent I knew since my biological ones were either gone before my time, or states away. Watching her go through it so quickly with a brain tumor was heart wrenching. The chemo, the radiation, the changes in her. The hospice. Yet still, even in junior high at the time it still didn't resonate to me that this was something so life altering.

Now at 29 and having dealt the past year with my best friends diagnosis, battle and CONQUER of breast cancer at the age of 28 I get it. Seeing someone who's life who has mirrored mine since our friendship began in the 4th grade made it REAL.

This wasn't someone who I vaguely knew. This wasn't someone old. This wasn't someone who to me had lived their life, this was someone who's life, like MINE, was just beginning.

And this made it all seem like I had to do something. Like this was reality. THIS hit home.

Kelly is amazing. She was scared, she knew things were going to change. Her life, her outlook, her relationships with people. And yet she took it all in stride. Her sense of humor, her humility and her integrity made me want to fight this with her side by side.

Armed with a pink ribbon and a new lease on this disease, I want to make people aware. I want to help other people beat this like she did. She didn't sit back and take it. She educated herself, she educated ME.

She taught me more about being a friend and about being a good person. She taught be that we all are bigger than this microscopic disease and that to me is WORTH being contagious.

I hope we all catch it.

Who took the "Whoo hoo" out of Wooing??

Posted Date: : May 29, 2008 8:49 AM
Gone are the days of wine and roses. Candle-lit dinners planned to "ooh and ahh", all a bunch of mindless fodder. Told in "once upon a time" scenarios back when people cared enough, like Hallmark, to send the very best.

No more are there sweet notes or poems written. No now it's email or text message. No hand-written letters scrawled on napkins just to say you're thinking about that certain someone. No calls just to say hello. Gone are the days of conversation that could sweep you away for hours, losing yourselves in worlds unknown.

No longer are words even spelled correctly. They're hyphenated and abbreviated in such a way that no educated human being could gather at first glance. "L8R" or "TTYL" have replaced even a simple goodbye.

What happened to dating? What happened to that butterfly feeling in the pit of your stomach? That getting all dolled up and changing outfits 52 times to get it just right event that once upon a time took place on a weekend night? When a person would call you, ask to spend time with you, arrange to pick you up and take you out in public for an evening of planned attempted romance?

I have noticed in my own observations as well as those of people around me that this once so common practice has been thrown out the window. Now replaced by sitting on the couch watching TV in silence, possible followed by a pseudo intimate encounter and a "Call ya later".

Where did we exactly go wrong as a society that we started accepting this as ok? Where did we as women accept that being hidden away like some sort of recluse was acceptable? Do we not want to get all dressed up and shown off for the world to see? Do we not want to have someone look at us for the first time like we are the only person in a room? Or listen to what we have to say and hang on our every word?

Do we blame inflation for our lack of going out? Do we blame gas prices? Do we blame our fore-fathers for setting such high expectations of wooing that their children's children cannot live up to such romantic expectations? Is it sheer and utter laziness or a combination of D, all of the above?

I'm not looking for William Shakespeare to write me a sonnet, or roses to adorn my sheets at bedtime nightly. I don't want to have dinner by candle light every day, nor do I want to be riddled with gifts. What I ask is not that uncalled for. It's not unattainable.

I simply want to be taken out in public. I do not want to be some late-night stop on your agenda. I do not want to be waiting in the wings for something better to come along. Women are a fickle and fabulous entity.

If you find someone you get along with, laugh with, have fun with, can talk to, are attracted to and like to spend time with…would you not want to share that with the world? Show her off??

What's the major malfunction?