Cancer Sucks

First, Taylor.  Now, another family member.  Cancer sucks and you don't realize how awful it is until it's part of your daily life and hits your own family.  Luckily, and through the grace of our Heavenly Father, good doctors, and a spirit and fire that says "Cancer Fears Me", our Taylor is still with us and hopefully will be for many, many more years.  However, the prognosis is not so good for a cousin's husband.

A couple weeks ago, I was reading the blog of a famous friend of mine who also happens to be the sister of the husband of my cousin.  That small connection, along with an almost scary stalker-like addiction (not really, but Mr. Spock probably thought it was that bad), connected us to where this famous friend actually came to my home a few years ago and painted a saying on my kitchen wall for me and ate our family's famous tacos with us.  Since then, we see each other here and there periodically around town, and I keep up on her blog to read her happy, inspiring thoughts and see what great things she has going on in her life.  However, when I read her blog that one single day, she mentioned how busy life had gotten recently and how a close family member has Stage 4 colonrectal cancer.  As she so eloquently put it....Stage stinking 4.

I know what Stage 4 means.  It's not good.  At all.  She didn't mention who it was, but I had a pit in my stomach that I tried to turn away.  It disappeared for a couple of days, but it kept drawing me back to look to see if she'd posted anything else.  Nope.  Just happy stuff.  That's the way she is.  But, then, last night, as I was laying in bed doing stuff on my iPad before falling off to sleep, I had a thought to go to Facebook for some reason - which, if anyone knows me, is not my thing.  But I went there, and sure enough, there were posts from my cousins confirming that it was, indeed, my cousin's husband.  What a horrible thing.  At least with Taylor's cancer, the prognosis was fairly positive.  But this one...again, it's stage stinking 4.

It's things like this that make me love my husband more, love my family more, forgive others for things they've done to me, make me apologize for things I've done, and just try to be happy with the good things I have in my life.