It is hard not to feel some days like I have dodged a bullet. While I look at those around me that continue to suffer I can t help but feel continually more blessed than anything else. The past six months have definitely been challenging in ways I would not wish to battle again. I witnessed, felt, experienced, and have learned things that honestly I pray to never forget. The price has been great but as I sit and think back I am overwhelmed by gratitude, by strength and even now as I am in post transplant rehab, I cannot help but just smile and cry. I think of the fear, the sadness and the weight of the knowledge of prognosis and can t begin to tell you what a fight this has been and will remain. I am more tired than I have ever been, I am less able to do many things than I once did and yet, in this there is such triumph.
Months of fighting, weeks of treatment, Days of inexplicable pain, hours of hell, and moments of not being sure if I was to make it, and yet I am still here. 3 cancer diagnosis, a week of full body radiation, every chemo you can imagine, a pulmonary embolism, diabetes, steroid withdrawal and a bone marrow transplant, and yet I am here, my body may be broken or not as it once was, but neither is my spirit. What is there to lose? What is there to fear? It is clearer to me now what little any of these thoughts can do for myself or anyone. I have watched and been blessed to spend time with patients in this course that have the worst odds imaginable, the darkest of probabilities and yet they walk the laps of the halls of 11 long with the power of God shining right through. I count myself blessed just to have been able to be surrounded by the giants, who on the daily probably have no idea of the strength they give just by continuing on.
There are no promises only hopes for what is to come in the next few years, but I am grateful with everything that I am for the Teams at Ucsf and the Teams at home that have buoyed around me for so many years now. There really is no way of ever showing how grateful I am, I mean how do you say thank you for your life. How do you express what it means to reflect on the days of diagnosis and relapse and explain to someone that on your worst day and in your darkest hour, their presence made a difference, the difference? If I figure out how I will let you know, but until then I will remain grateful, eternally conscious of the gifts given to me by those around. I pray that others that should ever embark on a journey as this are as guided and rallied around.
Oh and in case you still don’t believe in miracles
As of late 2010 the Chad Hickey Foundation has been incorporated and soon will begin being able to help others in their fight against cancer.
Thank You and as always
Have Heart
C is Still For Chad
To be Involved in the Fight
