Tomatoes

tried to Kill me

But Banjos Saved My Life

When I was 70 I met a man that was near 85 and he told me his story of cancer. He said 20 years ago I was given 18 months to live. He said he was included in a study of 400 men with his type of cancer and he was the only one of the 400 that survived. I was as you might imagine totally amazed, so I asked him what he thought the secret of his success was. He said that doctor was a good man and he did his best with all his patients; but there was one thing he forgot to tell me, he never told me which 18 moths would be my last, so I determined live them all and let the calendars figure out the rest. I tell this story to every person that shares their cancer journey with me, so that they can decide for themselves which 18 months they want to be their story ending.

I was a Paramedic for almost 35 years and I saw a lot of death. Lost my Wife of 42 years to lung cancer in 2013 and I wanted so much for her not to have pain, not to be sick, not to die but the only thing that was mine to have was to learn from every minute we had together. To do better to be better and to listen to peoples stories and share what I have learned.

Pat was a hospice nurse and she gave us a master class in how she wanted to die. She wasn't sure I could do what she needed because I was one of this life saving paramedic guys. In the end it is always our honour to serve and she thanked me for the job I did for her. With every patient that I got to serve it was always my honour to make their journey just what they wanted.

I met my now husband, Matt, about 23 years ago.  We were just friends, and we were part of running a youth church together. We were friends for a very long time.  Eventually we started to date and shortly after we got engaged.

About a month after I got engaged, I got a phone call from my doctor to come in.  I previously had cancer when I was 18 so obviously, I knew that meant a big thing. I went in and I was told I had cancer in 4 places in my body, Non- Hodgkin Lymphoma, and that I would have to have a bone marrow transplant.  

Very soon after I thought, I don’t want Matt to have to go through this with me so I decided that I would give him a way out. But he fought to stay connected to me and pursued me all the way and we fought it together.

Part of this treatment involved the very real risk of me not being able to have kids. We faced that fear together and went to faith, believing that God is a God of miracles. We decided to move our wedding date sooner than anticipated so that we could be married while we were going through treatments. 

We brought our marriage date up early; he was just totally my hero.  

Our wedding was beautiful and all the more meaningful with everyone knowing what we would be stepping into after our honeymoon. Hand in hand we were determined to step past this fearful diagnosis and the dread of the treatments ahead. 

I had to have intense chemotherapy so we knew we pretty much would have to have our honeymoon in the hospital.  Shortly after we got back from our short honeymoon, we got the call that we needed to come into the hospital to be admitted for the cancer treatment. We called this season ‘going in for the cure’. But we knew it wouldn’t be easy. 

While we were in the isolation ward of the cancer hospital, Matt slept on the couch beside me and was with me every step of the way. He took a semester off school and took much time off work as we didn’t have family nearby. He prayed for me every day and we read scriptures about healing out loud. All the doctors and nurses soon got to know us and started to call us ‘the newlyweds’.  Within days, I had lost my hair, but not my hope. There were many days of extreme pain and anguish, but we went through it together. My body got very weak, but my faith got stronger than ever. 

Even being bald in with wires sticking out of my chest somehow Matt still looked at me like I was the most beautiful woman in the world.  He was my hero and a true gift from God. Every step of the way he fought for me, he prayed for me, and we were all the way just believing that God would protect us to be able to have children one day.

Now I have been in remission for 18 years and within 5 years of being married I was able to get pregnant and now we have 2 beautiful babies, our miracle babies!

A hard but good foundation for our marriage to trust in God and trust in each other.   

I was born in 1954 & in 1985, as I was gazing down the road I was traveling on at the time, there were 2 abstract questions that preoccupying me. “Where will this journey of life take me? Will I be happy?” So I embarked on a self-introspection program to guide me in my pursuit. Visually, I suppose one could say I pulled off the road and found safe haven at a road-site rest area. Oddly, this is really when my journey began. In the interest of brevity, I will leave out many details.  We have all been in social settings where people ask “So what do you for a living?” You see, I never wanted to be remembered for this. So, the 1st trail I embarked on was to clearly define what success meant to me. No easy task…but in the end I settled on this. “Success, for me, is adding value to myself, the people I meet & the environment that surrounds me.”  I concluded that if I chose to live my life with this affirmation, I would be happy. In discovering this definition of success, there was a 2nd affirmation that really became embedded in me. This is “I am in the right place, at the right time, always!”  I also always wanted to publish a book, that in an abstract way, would define who I am, not a biography of sorts that would detail what “I did for a living and what happened along the way.” I’ve also always believed people enter our lives for a reason, and the timing of these encounters is more than coincidence. In 2008, one evening while in Montreal, I met two strangers, now friends, who gave me the inspiration on my book. On 9/11/2008 I completed the unpublished draft. Including front & back covers, in tiny font, it is 8 pages long. My search now is to source an illustrator to co-author the book.   If you are still following my story, the one question in your mind now might be what is the book all about. Well, it’s a book about me and the title is “It’s all about A.B.O.T. ”My Attitudes. Beliefs, Opinions & Truths influence how I perceive reality around me, which affects my behavior, which in turn, determines my results.  If I am not happy with my results. I must do more than change my ‘behavior’ or how I ‘perceive’ my situation. I must closely examine my A.B.O.T. ‘s and make changes at this deep level. I am at cause in the creation of my experience, not at the effect of it. This is true for all of us. As I was discovering this, I came to realize that 4 other elements come into play as we proceed to our personal destiny. These are imagination, dreams, chance & coincidence. 

My husband and I purchased a long arm quilting machine in February 2020. We had only been quilting for a few years but we knew we wanted to do more. There was a need for Comfort Quilts: veterans, foster children, cancer patients, babies, nursing homes, etc. And then, of course, Covid happened! But we had plenty of time to practice with the machine and it was all charity work so we spent months getting better. And that first year we completed 300 quilts. We have learned a LOT and attracted a few customers and many more quilty friends. The journey continues and we are still turning out 300 plus quilts each year. The work is immensely rewarding and we are together 24/7 (retired), grateful and blessed to be able to help our community.