BLINK....BLINK...I have it easy!

Eyes are better a bit! Doctor says the corneal swelling is going down...yippee! You don’t have to worry about me on the road now! If you use a pc all day long like I do...BLINK and stop staring at the monitor all day! And, if you wear contacts...BLINK MORE OFTEN and take five minute breaks every hour throughout the day and use lubricating eye drops! It’s annoying to interrupt your work during the day...but doesn't compare to the interruption of daily life the chemotherapy injections will cause Matt EVERY SINGLE WEEK for the next two YEARS! Who am I to complain? Will ride 20 miles on a stationary bike tonight...realizing how very easy I have it.

WHO'S VIEW IS IT?

So far my training has been coming along just fine. However, since last October, I have been bothered by sometimes debilitating double and blurred vision. I have had “every test known to man” after an initial eye exam showed nothing too out of the ordinary. I continued to wear my contact lenses and had neurological exams, MRI, blood work-up, etc. Everything negative...but vision continued to worsen. Last Friday, I hit a “speed bump”...actually a major corneal speed bump known as a massive stigmatism which covers my entire left cornea which has now rendered me [temporarily we hope] just a few levels above “legally blind” so I can continue to drive. I am a writer and reading is very difficult, but I can still work....wearing two pair of glasses and using a magnifying glass! What a funny sight I am!!! Contacts are out of the question! Now on anti-inflammatory eyes drops and artificial tears. Everything is difficult...but, if all goes well and I am a candidate, surgery will occur on both eyes in a few weeks and I will see clearly again!!! It got me thinking...CANCER patients begin their scary journey with the hope that light will be seen at the end of the tunnel. I think of Matt every day...here I am worried about my temporary loss of clear sight...it’s really minor compared to what he bravely faces in his ongoing recovery. So, tonight I’ll swim...I can see the black line on the pool floor!!! Saturday, I run...life goes on...I won’t stop! GO TEAM!!!

Miracle Matt

“Matt Weber is smiling. And why wouldn’t he be? He’s back at Collegiate, full time, every day, attending class, hanging with friends, doing the stuff a normal 15-year old high school kid takes for granted.

Last year, though, life wasn’t quite so simple. You see, he spent his freshman winter and spring shuttling between home and the VCU Medical Center waging a concerted battle with a fearsome disease called T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.”

So began the article written by Collegiate teacher and coach, Weldon Bradshaw, on September 11, 2007 about a very special young man I have known since he was 8-years old and the almost-constant playmate of my son, Graham.

When I got word that Matt had been diagnosed on November 15, 2006 with the very disease I have for so many years raised funds for in an effort to find the cure for, it was as if it had happened to my own son and I was devastated. The fact that it came just one month after my own Dad's death from mantle-cell lymphoma...made my heart break just a little bit more.

A parent should never, ever have to hear the words, “Your child has cancer.” Yet, that is just what Matt’s Mom and Dad heard. I dream of a day when no parent...or anyone we love...will ever have to endure the pain of those words.