Once Upon a Time, in a fractured reality, a princess answered an employment ad....

First she had an interview. Then the position was put on hold, interview off. After a couple of days to adjust to the disappointment, the job reopened as a temporary spot. Two days later the princess was asked to come out to see the place and talk.

...And suddenly the end of the day was here and the princess realized she had a job. A REAL job, albeit temporary, working for a company, punching a time clock and paying taxes to The Man.

The Princess wasn't entirely sure what what she thought about this new job thing but she thought it could be very interesting and a good change of pace. And it's good to change the pace every decade or so now and then, right?

So tomorrow morning the princess will hang her crown near the door as she carries her lunch, her Wacom and her newly signed time card off to The Art Department of Family Owned Company. The on, off, on nature of getting there has left the princess a little leery about the benefit of this opportunity but, always game for an adventure, she's planning to play on the team.

Princess Working Stiff heads to bed early and sighs thinking that life was easier when all a girl had to do was kiss the right frog and she could be set for life.

Dear So and So---

Dear Whoever Wrote the Copy for the Employment Ad: "Immediate" is not spelled "i-m-m-i-d-i-e-n-t." I thought it was a funny mistake the first day it hit the paper in those BIG letters with the bolded font. For a job in graphics design. After seeing it run for 5 days I realize not only are spelling skills lacking, computer aided spell check is apparently on the fritz.
***
Dear Potential Employer: Not only will I be an asset to your layout and design department, I can spell "immediate" and many other big words. And I AM available for immediate work.
***
Dear Shredder Manufacturer--In my humble opinion, you may have misrepresented the ease with which your product is emptied. I questioned the design in my mind but your ad copy promising the amazing identity theft proof capabilities of your cutting pattern was enough to sway my doubts. On review, I have decided that no one wants to assume the identity of an almost 50 year old, unemployed woman with a rebellious estrogen overload anyway. I am returning your product. By the way, my AARP card which arrived in the mail this week is jammed sideways in the mechanism along with my birth certificate and a bottle of Midol which my arthritic hands could not open.
***
Dear Grocery Store Coupon Generator. What was in my cart that prompted you to spit out two coupons for future purchase of laxatives? Was it those crappy fiber bars that Sweeney eats? The raisin bran? The probioticfiberenhancedantioxidantbalanced yogurt drinks? You never spew forth with multiple coupons for Hershey or Mars products. Did you think I hadn't noticed??

Blog Posts Past

I must be sinking into hormonal morbidity. I tear up over everything. Today it was watching the fawns by the woods. Thinking that I had seen this little family come full circle since I moved here. Their moms are the fawns I watched grow through last summer.

Not content to beat myself up with the present, my trip down memory lane took me trolling through August blog posts past.

8/2007. Kevin is newly diagnosed with cancer. The blog becomes an easy way for family and friends to stay informed of his progress. And it gives me a place to rant and rave and be thankful all at once. And probably keeps me from squeezing the life out of a few Dead Doggers.

8/2008. Kevin is immediately post-chemotherapy. We ride our bikes again. He can sit down in the evening and stay awake for 30 minutes instead of 3. Ice cream returns to his menu while he figures out how to live with what we'll find out are permanent side effects. I'm measuring how to put a life back together post-cancer caregiver.

Long, drawn out days to 8/2009 Fast forward to 8/2009. We've settled into what Kevin calls "our new normal." He's still working through the change of side effects. He appreciates little things he was so surprised cancer disrupted. Being able to have ice in his drink. Smells that smell right. Taking a weekend nap instead of a daily nap. I've realized you can't reassemble the same life post-cancer because some of the pieces got misplaced in the process and some of them don't fit anymore. So you put together a new puzzle. Bring some of the good from those innocent, pre-cancer,days. And some of the bad too, just so you don't ever get complacent again. Wiggle around the new pieces, flex the old ones until you find the fit. Figure out what I want to do now that I'm all grown up....

My Karma got Hit by a Truck...

eff Karma, Fate, Nature, People, the Economy, Inter-Planetary Alignment. Whatever it is that makes things turn out the way things turn out. And toys with me in the process.

It has to be some sort of karmic kick in the rear that I score a job interview for a graphics design/layout artist position and then lose the interview in almost the same breath.

I sent in a resume on Saturday. Yesterday I was offered an interview. For a job with "digital photography experience a plus." In a company which got rave reviews in my research. A job I can so do and do so well. A job that's not 60 miles away and that needs filled immediately.

Disappointment not being in short supply, today while I'm pondering the possibility that I may have oversold myelf on my resume letting the fates mess with my confidence, the phone rings. Interview canceled. Position put on hold.

Another job lost to the economy before I even have a chance to lose it on my own lack of merit. I would at least have liked the opportunity to show them how much talent, loyalty, creativity, energy, skill and general office bonhomie they couldn't afford. (and let them know how cheaply it can actually be had...)

Monday Musing...

***I've realized I can be creative or I can be neat and tidy. The two events will not occur simultaneously. A cataclysmic clash of worlds (and resulting tsunami wave of mess) occurs when I feel creative in multiple directions.

***The fabric/patterns/sewing stuff obliterating the dining table and the pile of tutorials/notes/doodles in front of my monitor are witness to the reality noted above.

***I would seriously consider donating a body part to the creator of the Wacom. Just to let him/her know how essential their product is in my day.

***There is something immensely satisfying about taking a yard of cloth or an empty frame on the computer and transforming it into something unique, amazing, beautiful.

***Sometimes you do hit a home run. As in scoring a most excellent job interview for a most excellent position as a graphics artist with some digital photography work thrown in for good measure. Yeah, that would be me. Now to round the bases without tripping....

Wise Eyes

Second Grade.

You know your grandson is still a wonderfully young boy when his second grade teacher is a former Indianapolis Colts cheerleader and you realize he would be much more impressed if she was a former Indianapolis Colts player!

Dear Joshua, I love how you see the world at seven years old. There is so much wisdom in the depths of those baby blues! And sometimes a not small dash of quirky innocence too. Don't let go of the innocent part too quick, kid.

Love--G-ma

ps--I can make a good guess that there will be a lot more daddies helping out in your classroom this year than in previous years. Isn't it nice that the dads want to take a turn as room parent and general all around helpers instead of always leaving those jobs for the moms?

Dear So and So---

Dear Sadistic SOB Who Designed the Roll Out Shelf on My Computer Desk--Yes, I know I considered it quite the selling point when I bought your product. However, after multiple occasions of forgetting to move my drink BEFORE sliding the shelf in, I have decided that either you secretly own the carpet cleaning company or I am simply too stupid to safely operate such elaborate mechanisms.

***

Dear Body--It's true, I've largely ignored the owner's manual. I keep you clean; I don't bother with polish though and I've never once had you detailed. I feed you low grade fuel from the soft drink and chip aisle and the only thing premium in your diet is that I don't buy off brand soda. I've skipped most of the routine maintenance milestones, avoided regular tune-ups and generally ignored any system warning lights. Still, I am dismayed by the mutiny in progress. Do forty-nine years mean absolutely nothing to you? Where's the loyalty? Let's get back on track here; don't make me sacrifice a few inner parts just to prove to you that I mean business.

***

Dear Backyard--Thank you for keeping me company this last week. I appreciate your quiet support more than you know. You are a peaceful place rather than a lonely place and I thank you for that peace.

***

Dear Husband--while I know you are exhausted from a long week of 20 hour work days while you've been traveling...and it's very endearing when you tell me you're counting the minutes until you are home with me, please be aware that I have been alone for some 7223 minutes of the 7260 you have been gone. This accounts for 2 minutes interaction with the grocery store cashier, 5 minutes with the 77 year old lady from two doors down and 30 minutes spent negotiating control of my uterus with my gynecologist. It's ugly here. Come home bearing gifts.

Garden Goddess

Main Entry: gardener
Pronunciation: \ ˈgär-də-niŋ r, ˈgärd-niŋ r \
1 one who makes into a garden
2 to ornament with gardens

It's official. I have regained my status as a gardener.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I introduce The Tomato. Lovely, you say? Yes, it is. And there have been 23, count 'em, 23 before this one. From a little 2 x 2 plot in our downsized reality.

I'm not just a gardener. I'm a niche gardening goddess.

Can't Buy Me Love...

...but $4.99 can buy me enough baked chicken for three meals and a cashier who calls me "Honey." I knew I had been home alone too long when I wanted to go back in the store for something, anything...just so I could hear an in-the-flesh person call me "Honey" again.

I considered slipping her a five spot and asking her to say my name out loud.

Kevin is out of town for another week of leadership training. Being on my own 24/7, no job to go to, in a town where I know almost no one, is making me crazy. I've gone through enjoying the silence to talking to myself to talking to the plants. To hearing them talk back.

(And don't remind me of those chaotic years of children living at home, & daycare kids all day when I used to wish for some extended time alone...As my mind rolls the tape of my mother saying... Be careful what you wish for....Be careful what you wish for...you might get it.)

Tanning Solutions

I have a polite middle aged woman's version of the classic farmer's tan. The mid-life woman's version stops just below her knees where her discrete capri pants cut off the sun and starts again on her upper arms just below where the hemmed edge of her cap sleeved t-shirts rest. In between, from shoulder to knee, is a blackout area that hasn't seen sunlight in 15 years.

I was noticing this while waiting in my doctor's office today. She was called away to deliver a baby. Again. What's with babies waiting to make their grand appearance on my time? It must be some sort of gyno rhythm; I cover up with a sheet the size of a hand towel and somewhere nearby a laboring woman is suddenly at ten and ready to push.

It's getting to be common place. Me sitting in a less than private place with some very private places more exposed than I'd like for longer than I want while my doctor delivers a baby. I don't really mind waiting while babies get born; I mind waiting near naked while babies get born. It's a timing issue. Maybe we need to separate the specialty after a certain age. Those of us with no reproductive plans could opt for a GYN who doesn't have the OB attachment.

At the very least, since the blackout zone is on display, they could put in some tanning lights so I could even up my polite middle aged woman's tan.

Monday Musing

***My Response: Lovely. Here's a look at my office today.
...Mr. L.'s intial email: Take a look at our classroom. (panoramic video of typical gray classroom with no windows, multiple tables, overhead flourescent lighting)

***if the cat insists on staying around here, the least he can do is eat the bird in the woods. The one with the song that triggers the baying response from the dogs across the creek. Or he can skip the bird and just take out the dogs.

***if dark clouds really intend to throw down rain, they should give a girl more than a two minute warning. Some thunder or something. So she can pack up her office with a little care.

***in an absolute pinch a girl can balance a laptop, two cameras, one external hardrive, a cell phone, a cordless phone, a Wacom and her notebook while opening the backdoor and blocking the entrance of the cat who doesn't live here. A girl can be pretty certain the power supply to the computer will dry out with time.

***although logic demands that the Pepcid AC, consumed to quell the painful gut gnawing caused by having Pepsi for supper, should not be rinsed down with more Pepsi, sometimes life thumbs its nose at logic.

Dear So and So...

Dear Person Who So Miserably Failed to Understand the Concept of Leadership--"Sam, there are three people on this staff that I always stuck up for--Steve, Sue and Sally" was really no way to say goodbye to the fourth member of the staff . Bad mouthing TPTB, those who hold your paycheck--and now your severance--in the pages of their account books, is also bad karma. By the way, the moment you demand respect--and fail to exhibit it toward others, above and below your position--you have disqualified yourself from deserving it. You might find some insight in this that reveals why you were let go yesterday. And, just so you know, Gumby is not saying you are #1 as he waves goodbye. Not at all, at all.

*****

Dear Sam--Did you wake up this morning with a job to go to? And who didn't? I think that about covers it. But if you want to send your Gumby to my house, I'll fix him up with a special wave too.

*****

Dear Catless Person--I don't really care if it was the economy or a hard heart that caused you to throw her away in the woods out back. She's hungry and lost and looking in my window for her family. You suck.
*****
Dear Husband--Storing the hideous apple streusel fiber bars in the box labeled "Oats and Chocolate" fiber bars is just mean. Isn't it punishment enough that there are fiber bars in my pantry instead of Hershey bars? I should have listened when my nose tried to warn me as I opened it. Instead I had to spit saliva sticky apple streusel fiber bar into my hand. And rinse my mouth out with alcohol. I suggest you check your shoes.

Step One--Admit You I Have a Problem

I need a Twelve-step program. In fact, I think that's one of the steps.

The only program I'm admitting to vaguely wondering about is one for out of control mint consumers. LifeSavers Wint-O-Green mints to be precise. And you have to be precise because the others just won't cut it. Do you understand that? Don't hand me some cheap imitation or a nasty peppermint or crappy tictac. LifeSavers Wint-O-Green.

I've known I have a problem. After 15 or so, my tongue feels funny and my gut hurts, a burning pain that requires Pepcid AC to relieve.

Kevin keeps them stashed in his brief case and underwear drawer for those truly ugly moments. This time I instructed him not to enable me. No replenishing the hidden mother lode once I discovered and mined it. No emergency stash. Tough love.

I ran out in all the obvious places early last week. And the less obvious by that Tuesday morning. Perfect timing. I was on a nothing to eat order for 18 hours before surgery Wednesday and I would use that time to get through the first No Mints Hours. Made it to Thursday night before I started searching the house. By Sunday I had eliminated the stash in the console of our truck, searched the sock drawer and the toes of each sock in case my dear husband was getting wiley or actually thought I meant what I said about cutting off my supply.

This morning I found myself jonesing for mints in the seedy underside of the passenger seat of the Rendevous. I scored three, wrapped and pristine. I'll admit I would have eaten them if they were unwrapped and sticky with carpet fuzz.

If I wasn't kicking the habit I would be interested in the online site I found, totally by accident, today. http://us.myflavia.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3457750 Notice the box you can tick for auto delivery. No more slinking into CVS for a bag and stopping into the WalGreen's down the road for another. Not that I'm interested. Not at all.

Monday Muse...

***how does a toilet just magically break? Sprout a hole in the lower corner of the front of the tank? And how does a tenant manage to make that phone call to the landlord (or me, as the case may be) with any comfort level? "...just sat down and it broke..." I'm not saying it's not true, I'm saying it's uncomfortably weird. I've put it at the top of the list of phone calls I wouldn't want to make to my landlord.

***if I throw out the cooked bacon when I'm cleaning the refrigerator and then I regret it because I could go ahead and use it in the green beans I've decided to cook for dinner, is it bad form to retrieve it? If it landed in the grass out back, not in the dirt where the deer raid the feeder, and the crows haven't gotten to it yet and it's way too late in the morning for the raccoons to have given it a taste test? I mean, I boil the heck out of the pot of beans anyway....

***this email today, filed under the heading of Why does Mr. L. even bother trying to keep me in the real world loop...

My Response: Nothing on my end. I mean the usual everyday stuff like world peace negotiations, meeting with the UsedToBeBig Three in Detroit to pound out a plan where they learn to play nice with our money, teleconference in with world economic leaders to determine why, why, why M & Ms were $2.94 a pound yesterday at Menards. Other than that I'm clear. Oh, and do laundry. It's been awhile and I noticed you are wearing your swim trunks as underwear.

Mr. L's initial email:
Saturn goes in by 11am Tuesday to Monro
MIO Wed for a short meeting on Visual
Bob says change brakes at his shop is fine anytime.
What else is happening this week?

***if I ride my bike the half mile up to the local drive-thru liquor store (now there's a marketing plan that just begged for government intervention), can I buy one can of beer? To go? Should I bring my own plain brown paper bag like the cloth bags I take to Kroger or will one be provided? And will it be like stopping into the winery down the road for a bottle of wine--where they expect I might actually know something about wine? (I don't.) Will JR (and I can pretty much assure you his name tag will be spelled "JR," pronounced "Junior" And it will be his legal name and spelling.) at the drive-thru ask me what I want to serve with the beer? And will he even blink when I tell him I want to poke holes in it with a nail and stuff it up the rump of a chicken on the grill? I'm betting not.

GeekSpeak

Nickel-Metal Hydride.
My husband can actually use those words together in a sentence. I'm not sure what impresses me more--that he can formulate and explain a sentence around those words--and knows whattheheck he just said--or the fact that he can do all that and, still, he picked me.
Sometimes it's a bit much for me though. I just wanted to know if he could swap the fades-a-little-quicker-every-day cordless phone for the one already on the charger in his office. When I moved here we had three of those chargers; one for each phone in 3 different rooms, novel idea that that may be. Now there is one and it lives, or dies, in the Guest/Office/Exercise/AirDryingLaundryTooDelicateForTheDryer Room.
Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked here and your eyes are glazing over like mine do when Mr. L. talks about things like Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries. Especially when all I usually want to know is 'can you make it work and does it come in any other colors?'

This Is My Brain...

...and this is how it feels for a few days after the hospital.

And why I object so loudly to the whole repeated production of D & C w/hysteroscopy. Everything pertinent to the actual surgery/biopsy routine is feeling pretty good. I'm not interested in any mountain biking but overall I'm good to go. It's the general anesthesia induced cobwebs in the brain that bug me for days.

We gotta stop doing these or I gotta find a doctor who's sympatico with my bite on a strap it'll be over in a few minutes approach.

Good Morning, Mammogram!

My breasts and I headed to the hospital at 7:20 this morning. (Via car, no biking today. The scarecrow guy is still riding by a couple of times a day looking for corn after last week's caper. And Kevin says I can't have a pet.) Why did I schedule this thing for this early? This week?

If you haven't had a mammogram, discard all the pain filled stories you've heard. And certainly schedule one if you're in my age range. (You know, that certain age.) The mammogram itself isn't bad. (Thanks, honey, for doing your part in getting these things used to being handled.) It's the lead up and wait that gets to me. The perky technician--who won't be old enough for her own mammogram for another 18 years--tells me to take off everything from the waist up and put on a "gown" that opens in the front. Dusty rose. It's not even a gown, more of a cape; shorter than the ones you get at a good hair salon and with one flimsy ribbon to tie. Center front.

Someone obviously needs to rethink what and where we're trying to cover here.

Miss Pre-Mammogram collects me and goes over a few questions and instructions. Ol' Dusty Rose is kind of cool here; I mean, once the breast feeding years are over how many times in life does a civilized woman get to rakishly toss her cape off one shoulder and reveal a bare breast? (note to my daughters...I do not want a detailed list of venues and dates where you may have executed this very move...)

We go through the contortions of breast placement on shelves which surely have been stored in the freezer, the infamous compression, "hold your breath," snap a picture and release. Reposition in another come hither pose. "Right arm here, down more, push in closer, stretch up on your toes..." More awkward than agony. Miss P-M--who is a very competent technician even though my favorite bra is older than she is--leads me back to the waiting room and instructs me to wait, in my dusty rose glory, while they take a look at the films.

This is where the territory gets rough. Like the bathroom line in McDonald's, women like to make small talk in these places. I apparently missed that female trait and prefer to wait in silent invisibility. No such luck today, my stealth mode isn't working. An identically dusty rose caped woman smiles. I am going to have to be pleasant, possibly friendly. Crap. I nod and try to decide if she's new to the arena or in the midst of waiting for her own clear to go signal. And I try not to make eye contact, the implicit symbol of accessibility. Doesn't matter, she mentions the weather. I smile. She asks a question. Great. Now I have to respond. Another encounter. So we chat. In our common half dressed mammogram splendor. She gets the all clear and continues to chat me up while she's in the changing room. Ack! This is too similar to the through-the-stall-door bathroom chatter that I'm so lousy at. If she flings open anything to show me the incredible storage capabilities, I am going to hurl.

Miss Pre-Mammogram comes back in. I can't catch a gynelogical break these days. They want "more films." Apparently the left side isn't as naturally photogenic as the right side. And Talky Talkerton has finished changing and continued chatting. A reality that continues as she walks with me across the hall to the refrigerated meat locker radiology room on her way out. Her "Good Luck" as I head back toward the atom smasher makes me pause. Good luck? Do I need good luck?

Two more shots of the reluctant leftie and I'm good to go. Presumably for another year but now there's that whole "good luck' question floating in the air. I am encountered out for this week. Where's freakin' George Clooney when a girl needs him?

SlamIt! BamIt! Man-0-Gram It!

I remembered late today that I scheduled a mammogram for tomorrow morning. Early tomorrow morning. The mammogram itself doesn't worry me. The stories of pain and torture are exaggerated and my modesty scale has already been tipped for this week.

The encounter part of it concerns me. My encounter--as in talk-to-me, touch-me-again-and-I'll-eat-you--intolerance is at warp level. I don't know what I was thinking when I let all this get scheduled in the same week year.

The whole mammogram thing is another one of those gender inequities that puzzle me. If men had to take off everything below the waist, wrap up in a wash cloth that opens in the front and sit with a bunch of similarly garbed men while waiting to have a man-o-gram, this would all be different. Imagine a guy having to belly up to a refrigerator chilled plate where a male technician is waiting to help him lay out his goods so another refrigerator chilled plate can smash them to pancake thinness. And then, because that first go wasn't fun enough, he assists the tech in rearranging his recently smashed package for a shot from another angle. Assuming there are any men left standing, the tech asks him to wait while the films are checked. In case they need to repeat the process.

An idea like this wouldn't even get out of the brainstorming session if men were handling, squishing and filming man parts. We need more women in the medical device design business. When we perfect the Man-O-Gram as a testicular screening event, we women will get a pinpoint accurate breast screening tool that involves turning sideways and coughing discretely while a hunky male doctor (and it'll be good enough if he just plays a doctor on TV) holds a warm, soft finger gently under each boob. Breast cancer will always be caught early, and eventually eradicated, because we'll all be standing in line to have George Clooney do our breast exams.

On a Scale of 1 to 10, 1000

Some buttinski baby decided it just had to be born today. Which considerably delayed my party. Which contributed greatly to Mr. L.'s Waiting Anxiety and my Overall Bitchiness Range.

I passed the time by planning how I was going to Photoshop the cute little smiley faced pain chart once I got out of there.

Two hours after the weigh in, pee in a cup, kiss my clothes goodbye, get an IV started, answer the same 20 questions for the twentieth time, sit on a bed behind a curtain that really doesn't conceal or deflect anything rigmorale began, I was getting edgy. Listen, my uterus was here long before the chick's across the hall and she's already done, outta here and eating lunch at Burger King.

And somehow I had morphed into a plural being (which may explain the outrageous co-pay; I am being billed as two.) A cheerful nurse checks in with "Things are running a little late because doctor had to deliver a baby. How are we doing in here?"

"Well, you're doing fine because you have all your clothes on, I just heard you ordering your lunch and you're getting paid to be here. I, however, am naked beneath a flimsy open backed gown whose little ties are all torn off, I haven't had lunch. Or breakfast. Or supper last night. And I had to pay for the effing pleasure. We? Really? WE???"

D-day

**disclaimer: If you can't say or read the word uterus, go away. Really. Just effin go away. You've obviously never had a uterus of your own. Or never had a willful one that took control of every day of the month for months on end.**

We've been at this for a year now. I own more photos of the inside of my uterus than of my face. After monthly raids for ultrasounds, biopsy and surgical  assaults, my uterus cowers everytime I get undressed.

Dead Women Pay No Bills

I didn't mind this morning when Cheerful Lady called from the hospital to bump my scheduled time for an upcoming D & C.  The doctor has an earlier opening. I'm all over that idea. The sooner she's in, the sooner I'm out.

Call Number Two from the hospital today was to recap what I had already answered 11 days earlier in the registration call. And 3 days later during the lab visit. "Listen, ma'am, I've answered these same questions three times for the hospital.  I hope you have a pen and write down my answers this time. I make this stuff up as I go and it's darn hard to be consistent."

Call Number Three was the clencher. A review of the same questions and same answers then "...I would like to collect your co-insurance now." Say what? You have to be kidding. I have to pre-pay for a hospital visit? And why? They don't want to risk being unable to collect after the fact. Seems the local bad economy has bitten me in the uterus.

If I thought the implication was simply that I'm a deadbeat who can't or won't pay I wouldn't mind so much. I'm more concerned that this is a confidence problem on their part--they know they can't collect from dead people.

2 Years, 15 Hours, 56 Minutes

Two years. Two years, fifteen hours and fifty-six minutes since a doctor I had never met before and have never met since told me Kevin had rectal cancer. I remember thinking, even as he was telling me about lesions and tumors and cancer and surgery, that he was doing such a good job of giving me such shitty, pardon the pun, news. And the nursing staff was fantastic. The gastroenterology suite at Home Hospital has become my benchmark place for where you want to be, who you want to deliver, stunning, life altering news.

Anyway, in honor of Kev's second cancer-versary (Not that he likes to celebrate or even recollect the date. He was blissfully under the influence of anesthetics through the worst of the day and has taken that approach as often as possible since. But the minutes, seconds of the day are permanently etched in my mind.), to mark the momentous two year occasion of being stunned, muddling through it and leaving it behind (damn those puns), I found this little gem on YouTube. A lovely tribute to the doctors he had in the beginning who set the stage for how we would get through it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N0w2rORwSc