Day 2 (I love this stuff)

We left Warrenville this morning and drove up to Rockford, about 90 minutes away.

Today was a day for visitors, I guess.  It was also a day for changes.  Let me re-phrase that, this weekend has been full of changes and there's more to come tomorrow.  Yesterday Mike from FL and I came on.  Today Bobby O. from IL and Dave from IN both left and tomorrow as we go to Delafield, Jamie from FL and Danny from NC both head home.  All four of these guys are salt-of-the-earth (does anybody even say that anymore? Yeesh) types.  Really good guys and I'm going to miss them, even though I've only known them for a couple of days. 

So today I ran into an old friend (we used to work side-jobs together) met a new friend from the Twitter... saw a cousin and her husband, the boy child, the photographer and Beatle baby, but without question, the most impactful moment happened as a result of someone I met yesterday.

At the Aurora event on Saturday, a woman came up to me and we talked about the pink fire trucks.  "P" said she was a survivor.  A 5 time survivor (let that one sink in for a minute) and she wanted to sign the truck.  She did, we all hugged her and she spent a little time talking to a couple of the guys.  So, this afternoon, I was helping out with t-shirt sales and I looked up to see "P" walking towards us.  She saw me and said hi and told me she wanted to exchange the shirt she bought yesterday because it didn't fit.  I said "you drove all the way up here for that?"  She said "you know, in all the excitement yesterday, I completely forgot to sign in memory of my Mom, Grandma and an Aunt that all died from cancer.  I said "Let's go take care of that for you"

As we walked toward the truck she wanted to sign, a cancer patient walked past us.  She had lost her hair.  "P" started sobbing softly and I asked her what was wrong. 

"I never lost my hair. I feel so guilty"

We stopped walking and I put my arm around her shoulder.  I told her "it's ok, you don't have anything to feel bad about, you kicked cancer's butt 5 times.  It affects different people in different ways."  It took her a few minutes to regain her composure. 

It took every ounce of strength I could muster to not start bawling like a baby with her.  It was an incredibly emotional moment, one of the most intense I've felt on tour. 

After our event at the hospital, we had four home visits.  They went really well, but were very emotional as well.  On one of them, it struck me that the young children of a stage four cancer patient were in pretty good spirits, considering the way their world was soon to be turned upside down.  But a little later, one of the other drivers made a good point.  One that I hadn't considered.  They were most likely so used to Mommy being sick, roughly for a third of their young lives, that they were kind of numb to it.  It was so normal to them that the emotion was gone from it.  I guess I'm so used to the perspective of sudden loss that I tend to forget that side of loss. 

I've got a couple pictures from two of the home visits and, again, I was careful not to use any identifying shots.  Just something to show what we do.

That's John from OK (he's famous, you know) with one of our survivors immediately post hug (of course you don't know that, I haven't told you yet) and he's showing her that he doesn't have any hair either (I promise I'll tell you more about John later).  And then this one-

We met so many fighters today, and we left with so many good feelings.  Feelings that we'll all carry for a long time. 

I'd like to think I'll remember everyone we met today.  I don't know if that's possible, but we met some wonderful people and some amazingly strong women.  Here's to keeping up the fight!

Pink Heals!

Peace!