Tonight's picture was taken on August 6 of 2009. How do I know the exact date? It is perhaps one we will never forget, because this is when we learned that Mattie's cancer was terminal. Notice Peter was holding Mattie and Jocelyn's boat in his hand. This was the same boat that I have been showing on the blog the past two nights. I wanted to put this whole scene into context for you! While Mattie was with Jocelyn, her sister, and Brandon designing boats and having boat races in the sink, Peter and I were meeting with Mattie's oncologist. We were having a very serious conversation in which we learned that Mattie's cancer spread to almost every one of his internal organs. It was a horrible conversation, in which we had to refocus from a cure to managing pain and a humane death. The scene you see here, was literally right after we came from seeing the doctor, and we came back into the clinic and were reunited with Mattie. As you can see, Mattie was intently looking at us to study our reactions and to determine what was going on. Kathleen, one of Mattie's outstanding HEM/ONC in-patient nurses (in pink) was bending down in the photo. It was highly unusual for Kathleen to leave the in-patient unit to come to the out patient clinic (so Mattie was already suspicious), but she wanted to be on hand to lend support. In so many ways, this photo was a snapshot of CRISIS. Crisis of parents, crisis of a child trying to understand what was happening, and even crisis in a health care provider trying to hold it together as she tried to help a family through yet another horrible hurdle. Mattie's nurses went through it all with us, and unfortunately in Mattie's cases, we never rarely received positive news. It was one nightmare result after another.
Quote of the day: The weak fall, but the strong will remain and never go under! ~ Anne Frank
I know from looking at the calendar that today was Palm Sunday. Yet in all reality, I am not sure if I was coming or going. I had the opportunity to meet up with my friend Carolyn today and her two children. I met Carolyn when Mattie and her daughter were in preschool together. We have been connected ever since and Carolyn has been our Foundation raffle chair for five years! Running the raffle is a major commitment and labor of love. But Carolyn's whole family is involved in the Walk. About a month before the Walk, Carolyn and I always make our annual pilgrimage to the Christmas Tree Shops in Waldorf, MD. Mind you, we don't go alone. Her children come with us. They have been doing this with us since they were like 4 and 6 years of age. Now Ellie, is almost 12. I have watched them age and mature. They happen to be outstanding shoppers and they are enthusiastic about the Walk and really look for items that will fit into the baskets we are raffling off. They are fun to shop with and after our shopping adventure we always have lunch together. Over the years, I have observed them maturing and today we had all sorts of conversations. I can only imagine that this is most likely the type of dialogues I would have had with Mattie if he were alive today. Needless to say, we had a very productive and yet another fun adventure together today. We had no plans for Palm Sunday, and in a way, I appreciated Carolyn getting me out of my home, away from the computer, and getting to spend time with her children.
When I got home today, I had the brilliant idea to start cleaning our deck. Mind you Peter had been glued to the computer all day, trying to get our Walk Registration site up, loaded, and operational. That was a MAJOR super human feat. It is super human because we have an old and antiquated system. It is my hope that within the next few months we can upgrade our website and with that make all our technology needs more user friendly to work with from our end. But right now, what Peter created today took technology know how.
Any case, our deck was a royal mess from the birds. The cleaning was intense but we made good headway. So much more needs to be done. I am happy to say the Walk website has been launched as well as our on-line raffle. I invite you to both. We already have walk registrations coming in!!!
Registration: https://www.mattiemiracle.com/Cancer_Walk_2014.html
Raffle: https://www.mattiemiracle.com/Raffle.html
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