There is Always Hope

This beautiful and inspiring woman with a powerful message contacted me through email this morning asking if I would share her story. Her husband shared his side of the story from a caretakers perspective back in March. You can read his side HERE.

You can read about Heathers treatment HERE

I hope you enjoy her story as much as I have and I feel really honored she contacted me to share her story with you.

Have an Amazing week full of Miracles and moments that take your breath away!

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Inspirational Guest Post

This very powerful, touching, inspirational guest post is from Cameron Von St. James, thankyou for sharing such a beautiful story! May your wife continue in good health and your family have a long loving lasting time together!

Providing Care During Cancer Recovery

My wife Heather was diagnosed with cancer in November of 2005. Every day since then, I have learned things about myself that I never thought were possible. I've watched her grow as a person, grown as a person myself, and learned so many valuable lessons that I couldn't possibly write them all here. I continue to learn each day and grow. It didn't start out that way, though. It started out in November of 2005 in a doctor's office with my wife and I scared senseless about the diagnosis we had just heard: malignant pleural mesothelioma. We'd just had our first child three months earlier, a beautiful baby girl we named Lily. How could this happen to us at what should have been the most joyous time of our lives?

We didn't have the answer, and over the following months, chaos set in. Heather quit her job to work full-time battling cancer. I worked as much as I could and served as caretaker of both my wife and my newborn daughter. I checked the mail and saw our growing medical bills and felt a huge weight amassing on my shoulders. Terror set in. How would we pay all these bills? How could we afford another trip to Boston, where Heather's treatment would take place? This was perhaps the hardest lesson I had to learn through this process:  that there is no room for pride or stubbornness in a battle with cancer. I had never before accepted financial help from family and friends but in this case I had to. My wife's life was on the line and I would do anything to keep her with me.

She needed me to give her love, and I gave her that, an unwavering support that on the outside seemed strong when she couldn't be. She won't ever know the number of nights I stayed awake crying, not knowing how we were going to make it, fearful of what would happen if she left Lily and I alone so early in life. Thankfully, that didn't happen though. Heather underwent months and months of grueling treatment for mesothelioma, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments in the attempt to rid her body of this cancer.  Today, over seven years since her diagnosis, Heather is cancer free, Lily has a beautiful mother, and I have a beautiful wife that has taught me so much about strength and bravery, and the power of hope and optimism.

Two years into her treatment, I went back to school full-time to study Information Technology and pursue my dream of earning a college degree.  The lessons I learned throughout my wife’s battle with cancer gave me the strength and determination I needed to achieve this goal.  I graduated with high honors, and was given the great honor of giving the commencement speech at my graduation ceremony. I told my fellow graduates that just a few years earlier, being told that my wife could die and leave me a widowed single father, I never imagined that I would be up on that stage giving that speech.  I told them that within each of us is the strength to accomplish incredible, even impossible things, if we only just believe in ourselves.   Lily and her mother were in the audience to cheer me on, and that was the greatest reward of all.

 

Biggest Financial Mistake: Post Swap with Tessa!

This is a guest post by Tessa over at  Can't Find Cash, where we are swapping posts for the day relating to our Biggest Financial Mistake we have ever made! Be sure to visit Tessa as she is a wonderful blogger and is a joy to read!

Written by Tessa:

When I was a sophomore in college, I was young and stupid. Actually, I'm still a bit young and stupid, but I'm learning from my mistakes as I go.

Anyway, there I was in college and I had a friend who was having money issues. I didn't actually know her very well, but I thought she was a great person. Honest, trustworthy, and all in all pretty awesome. So when she told me about how she wasn't going to be getting any money until the next month and she'd already been turned down for payday loans, I asked what she needed money for. She was a freshman at the time and was in her first semester in a sorority. She needed money for dues because if she didn't pay them immediately, she would be kicked out. 

Being the nice, albeit stupid person I was at the time, I told her "well you could use my credit card to pay it and then next month when you get money, you can pay me back." (Like I said, stupid.) So she sits at my laptop in my dorm room and uses my credit card to pay her $250 in sorority dues. At the time, I just thought "hey, I'll get it back! I can count on her!"

Of course, six months later I had a falling out with my then roommates and moved to a different dorm building, all the while calling the gal that owed me money. She ignored calls and text messages and all in all pretended like I didn't exist. I got ahold of her mom's phone number though and explained the situation to her. Then my friend called me back, crying, because she was now in trouble with her mother. She said that she slid an envelope with my name on it and half the money she owed me in cash under my old dorm room door. (My old roommates still lived there, and this girl was friends with them still.) I told her that I didn't live there anymore and she would have to call them to get the money back or come up with the money again.

About a week later (after hounding her even more about this money) she showed up with $67 and some change. She said it was all the money she had at the moment and she would get the rest to me whenever she could.

It was that moment that I accepted that that was all the money I would be getting from her and that I was an idiot. We all make mistakes, and the most important thing to do is to learn from them. I know now to never ever lend money to people. I have since given money to people, but only small amounts and with keeping in mind that I'm not going to get it back.