Vince's Journey

I'm pretty sure I mentioned last week that while we were in St. Louis recently we took the family to see The Book of Mormon. The show was great, very funny and nothing - God included - was sacred. One of the funniest parts of the show was when the 2 Elders arrive at their mission destination, Uganda, and meet the villagers for the first time. The village is full of strife, most of them have AIDS, and they teach the missionaries a new song that helps them cope with all their lives' struggles. The song is basically a ripoff of Hakuna Matata from the Lion King titled 'Hasa Diga Eboi'. The only problem is, it doesn't mean 'no worries for the rest of your days' - not at all - it's basically the same as extending your middle finger to the sky and yelling, 'God!'....like I said, nothing is sacred. (Whether Hasa Diga truly means FU or not, for the sake of this blog post we'll just assume that it does!) They were even selling t-shirts with the expression; I joked that I wanted to buy one so people would ask what my t-shirt means. I seriously wouldn't think of actually wearing such a shirt but I am very tempted of having a t-shirt with 'Hasa Diga, cancer' on it because cancer truly does suck. This past week I've been preparing myself for the next chapter in my ongoing battle with cancer. Today I had a PET scan to make sure there are no other hot spots in my abdomen and on Wednesday I have an appointment with Dr. Leming to talk about my options moving forward. While all this is going on, I've been talking with a couple families whose sons have recently been diagnosed with a blood cancer to help council them through the early stages of their battles, last week we lost a neighbor who had battled melanoma, we continue to pray for close friends who are recovering from bone marrow transplants and a day doesn't go by where we're not reminded of what a horrible disease cancer is...Hasa Diga, cancer indeed. The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society recently launched a new campaign...'Someday is Today'. Simply put, it's time to stop talking about curing cancer 'someday' and do all we can to make it happen now....today! I admire the LLS for having the courage and optimism to make such a bold and aggressive statement. LLS has been fighting blood cancers for over 60 years, they've made tremendous strides...now it's time to finish the job. It's been a long climb. And as is the case with any climb, the closer we get to the top, the more difficult the climb becomes. And when you get to the point we're at today there is no time to rest and catch our breath, we need to work that much harder to finish what was started many years ago. It's a tremendous challenge and we owe it to the people who started this battle back in 1949 to put an end to blood cancers once and for. A group of us are planning to go to Scotland in September to ride our bikes on behalf of the LLS. Our goal is to raise $50,000 to aid blood cancer research. We are all committed to achieve this goal. My recent relapse has me even more determined to see this through. Look for information on this ride in the very near future. We could use a few more riders so if you have any interest please let me know. If riding a bike isn't for you, any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated. I truly believe it is our generation's destiny to find these cures. Let's do all we can to make these cures a reality - there could be no better way to say, 'Hasa Diga, cancer!'