Day -3: Never say, “Never.”

Ahhh . . . Saturdays at the hospital have their positives and negatives. For now, I will only discuss the positives and hope that we will not have to deal with the negatives. On Saturdays there are very few people here so we can wander the halls without worrying about crowds. It is a lot more relaxed and we started the day with our morning walk/coffee. We also watched the sunrise from our hospital room window (see images below). It was a good thing that we were moved across the hall yesterday so that we could see the sunrise every morning. *Story continues below images . . .

On our walk we met with O’Brien, a middle-aged lymphoma patient and transplant recipient. His story was pretty incredible so we hope to meet with him again soon. He has been battling the cancer half of last year. He was admitted to the hospital on that same day as Jason, and he will be receiving his transplant on the same day as well. His story is a little different in that he will be receiving his own stem cells, and not the marrow of a donor. These types of transplants are ideal and he will likely be out of the hospital in just a few weeks. Incredible!

O’Brien is a runner who had his knees replaced five years ago. Doctors told him he wouldn't run again but he just completed another half-marathon last year.

His story reminded me of a particularly inspirational moment that I experienced while on vacation in Ft. Myers Beach, Florida. I was standing in line at the beach Dairy Queen and noticed the attractive man in front of me; his legs had large scars running up the back of his calves. He was a tall young man and I whispered something to my mom questioning what caused the scarring. Just then, the man grabbed his ice cream through the window and turned to walk away. I noticed a small black tattoo of text across his bicep, it read: “You will never walk again.”

I have reminded myself of this memory whenever life starts to get “impossible.” Clearly, that young man had been in a situation where he was told he would not walk again. But there he was, on the beach, scars on his legs exposed for the world to see, and walking. Never say, “Never.”

PS – Last night Jason and I were watching a purple light flashing in one of the windows across the way. When we asked an NA about the lights, he told us that the hospital has implemented a UV light cleaning system in all of their rooms, in addition to standard housekeeping procedure. Not so sure how it works, but the lights are pretty to watch at night when we cannot sleep.