Grace and glories

Morning glories
My patio won't look like this until late August

I love morning glories. My plants have finally started to grow after a slow start from being rabbit feed and are about 2 feet tall now climbing a shepherd's hook. They eventually will trail along the string of solar lights I've strung up. In the late afternoon, the sun hits the glass balls and they look like diamonds. Steve said my hummer is back feeding on the red lilies and the impatiens. Still think impatiens haven't much to offer the hummers. As if I did not have enough flowers, I bought some end of the season 'bargains'-a beautiful angel wing basket of orange begonias and a burgundy hibiscus which I planted in the ground although maybe I should put it in a pot.

Today and tomorrow will be cool, good for my long runs. I did 6.7 miles on the 'scenic beauty ' road this morning. I will eat lunch with an old friend, who is a stage 4 lymphoma survivor and later I will go out to Happy Hour with another friend. I put some gel in my hair so it sticks out. Still it is growing so painfully slowly.

Grace. Wish I had it in both the physical and non-physical senses. I have been reading some cancer patients' stories on how they handle really impossible situations with grace. Two stories that have particularly moved me:
1) The story of Sharifah, a teacher in Malaysia whose dentist one year ago noticed a lump on her tongue-oral cancer. (see http://hiduplama.blogspot.com/) She now has no tongue and can not speak or eat except with a feeding device she calls Miss Peggy. She handles this situation with aplomb grateful for everything. I started reading her story because a mom of one of Naomi's friends was just diagnosed with oral cancer and is devastated. I don't know any details beyond that. Dennis of "being Cancer" (http://beingcancer.net/) has cataloged all the cancer blogs he can find by type of cancer, breast cancer and lymphoma being the most numerous by far. Lung cancer is the number one cancer I think but hardly any blogs on it.
2) The story of Shin. see http://www.shinscancerblog.blogspot.com/
She was a 36 year old Korean lady married to an American with 2 very young children. Her breast cancer came back 2 years after it was first diagnosed and spread all over the place: brain, bones, liver and lungs. The lung mets killed her this January but in her last few months, she dedicated her life in preparing birthday presents for years to come for her children. There are videos of her doing this on the right side of her blog. She had been a newscaster in Singapore at one time so she had quite a public following.

The first lady will probably survive her cancer but her life has been changed forever. In both of their blogs they address the issue of 'being brave'. Their point is that they are not really brave at all, just doing what has to be done.

If this monster comes back especially in the form of distal mets, I am sure that I won't be able to deal with it so gracefully. I am mad as hell for all I've gone through, which is nothing compared to what these ladies have faced.