[Joy]

While I'm a junkie for the fabulous information on this site, I think that a thread like this is possibly better! thank you somuch for sharing your stories.

I have an amazing story or two.

When I was first dxed as stage I, of course i was devastated and living in panic. I had my lumpectomy and was waiting to start A/C. My family was here and being so supportive. My mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law and my kids went out to eat and we had to wait and wait for a table (because as we joke in Ft. Collins-no one cooks here). they offered us two tables next to each other and we decided to wait for a table together.

So we were seated at a big table and it had been cleaned up from the last party-all good. I took my seat and noticed that at my place setting there was an origami crane made out of someone's deposit slip. The next day my sister bought me a book on origami and we looked up the crane which symbolizes long life and prosperity. And that day I got my path report which said clean margins, no node, no vascular invovlment. Which was what we were so hoping for. I still have it and have never opened it up to see who's it was-mostly cause I know I could never refold it.

Of course, the game changed two years later when I was redxed and given months to live. Over 5 years ago!

My other story is from this summer. I have started a sketch book of things I want to manifest and positive images for this ridiculous fight we all have. I have always loved dragonflies and turtles as their 'medicine' is long life. Dragonflies have survived since prehistory and turtles live an amazingly long time. And they are just cool!

So in the long car ride to our houseboat trip in texas i sketched dragonflies on one page and turtles on a couple pages. Sooo we set up our houseboat in this cove and over the next couple days we saw dragonflies of every color, shape size EVERYWHERE. they would land on me and just hang out. AND there were turtles in the water constantly. On both sides of the boat at any given time I could see a couple of turtles surfacing and staring, going under and coming back up and by the end of our houseboat time they had moved very close to where we would swim. We named our cove "Tortuga Cove". On our last morning I just sat in the water and talked to the turtles and let the dragonflies hover every where and it is a visual that I hold dear every day.

Life is amazing!