I'm trying to finish watching the end of ABC's Extreme Home Makeover - probably the best show on television right now. Each week, a huge team of people come in and renovate - not just a family's home - but their lives as well.
This week is about an 8 year old who is fighting cancer. She and her team went to a hospital and renovated it for the other cancer patients. Meanwhile, the ABC team came in and built them a new house.
What really hits me about this one is the spirit of this girl. We spend so much time absorbed in our own lives that we forget about those suffering - unless it happens to someone close to us.
In the spring of 2002 - the last semester of my senior year, I went to the doctor for a pain behind my shoulder blade. After several trips through the MRI tubes, a few radiation-enhanced photography sessions, and a very uncomfortable ultrasound, the doctor said I had lymphoma and I needed to get it treated. A week later I was in the Mayo clinic fighting their billing department while standing on millions of dollars of imported Italian marble (but that's another article). However, when I walked out of there, my lymphoma had mysteriously changed to another type of growth - still dangerous, but not nearly the cancerous level.
But I was empathetic two years later when my mother was diagnosed with lymphoma. Her's was actually true. Officially, she had Burkit's Lymphoma - rare, fast-spreading lymphoma. She was literally days from dying when the doctors rushed in the first chemo. She almost every day of the next six months fighting her cancer. And she just passed her six month point of being cancer-free.
My point? I don't even know. I know that pre-cancer Matthew was structured and organized. Post-fake-cancer Matthew is much more spontaneous, given to bouts of laziness, and it sick of wasting time spinning his proverbial wheels. We all have a mission to accomplishe while we are here on earth. Illnesses and other catastrophic events teach us that we need keep that point in mind. We need to find the important things and go after them.
This week is about an 8 year old who is fighting cancer. She and her team went to a hospital and renovated it for the other cancer patients. Meanwhile, the ABC team came in and built them a new house.
What really hits me about this one is the spirit of this girl. We spend so much time absorbed in our own lives that we forget about those suffering - unless it happens to someone close to us.
In the spring of 2002 - the last semester of my senior year, I went to the doctor for a pain behind my shoulder blade. After several trips through the MRI tubes, a few radiation-enhanced photography sessions, and a very uncomfortable ultrasound, the doctor said I had lymphoma and I needed to get it treated. A week later I was in the Mayo clinic fighting their billing department while standing on millions of dollars of imported Italian marble (but that's another article). However, when I walked out of there, my lymphoma had mysteriously changed to another type of growth - still dangerous, but not nearly the cancerous level.
But I was empathetic two years later when my mother was diagnosed with lymphoma. Her's was actually true. Officially, she had Burkit's Lymphoma - rare, fast-spreading lymphoma. She was literally days from dying when the doctors rushed in the first chemo. She almost every day of the next six months fighting her cancer. And she just passed her six month point of being cancer-free.
My point? I don't even know. I know that pre-cancer Matthew was structured and organized. Post-fake-cancer Matthew is much more spontaneous, given to bouts of laziness, and it sick of wasting time spinning his proverbial wheels. We all have a mission to accomplishe while we are here on earth. Illnesses and other catastrophic events teach us that we need keep that point in mind. We need to find the important things and go after them.
posted by Matthew and Martha Morgan at 8:57 PM
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