AN AMAZING FILM!!

I was diagnosed with uterine cancer on 2 August 2007. The sample obtained by D&C ,on August 1 proved to be adenocarcinoma. It was not in my life at all until that week. We were booked for flight to Africa on August 14th. Time was short when they said I needed a total hysterectomy. The days were hot and humid in Virginia, lazy summer wheather. We looked forward to our work overseas, we had sent all our supplies and they were going to pick up our jeep and things were planned. Day to day we lived out of our suitcases.
Our daughters were concerned, my husband was getting anxious, and I was spending more time thinking of my life and things I have done and people I had met. Recently Tammy Baker was on Larry King and we saw what cancer looks like, she had fought 13 years with her cancer. She died the next day, she was gone, and up till the end she believed she was ready to go to be in heaven.
Now, am I to experience this same painful existence, deteriate to skin and bones, breathing with help of a tank of oxygen, finding it difficult to talk?
Believe me, it is not what I had imagined the end of my life would be, I had invisioned I would go quickly and painlessly.
Cancer has many layers. Some of us suffer for long periods, some of us are able to survive by surgery, some by radiation and or chemotherapy, and a few find themselves with incurable cancers that are inoperable and untreatable.
This is not a competition, where one says I suffer more than you, you have it easy and I have it more painful and more intolerable. What is that all about?
What we all have in common, and I know this to be true, is we feel a lost of control. This is not what we invisioned for ourselves. I don't want to suffer, I do not want to be out of control of what happens to me.
Kris Carr, grew up with a loving family. She graduated from high school and planned a life for herself. She had a talent and found a way to express herself in acting in independent films. She had a passion, this is what we want for our children, to fufill their dreams. She was young, energetic and talented. After a celebration, the success of a film she participated in she returned home and found herself unexpecticly ill. A visit to her doctor,had became a turning point in her life. Now a curtain was coming down, such has on stage,an ending. However, she chose to turn that dismal ending into a "fight", that became very personal. She chose to document that experience, much that I would expect from a film student. A documentry that was written, as she experienced it. We should all be so lucky, to record our emotions and record our expriences on film. Her story was compiled and presented to the viewer and I am the better for it.
You, nay sayers, take note. If you had been prepared and passionate enough to document your experience with cancer, we would all be talking about you. No one has done this until now, as well as Kris Carr and her Cinematographer whom had seen her experience her struggle.
There is a message here, for those diagnosed with cancer, for those who have been sent on a path different than they intended. Her
message is for all of us, who are made to make choices.
You may say your path is far different, more hurdles, more pain, more struggles without support or finances to obtain better care. I do not doubt many have suffered much more than Kris, she has more to bear in her future than I. My daughters are grown and doing fine, Kris can only hope that one day she will have children of her own. Yet, she is doing so much better than others. It goes on and on. Why do you judge her intentions, her movtives her success her lack of suffering? This is not about competition!
God bless you, may you find peace and may you be released of this horrible disease!
Do not blame the messenger, but hear the message. You are not the disease you are a woman or a man, filled with dreams and hopes and desires.
Kris, gave me a renewed perspective of my life. My cancer was removed from my body, the lymphnodes were benign and I was told the cancer had not spread. I was lucky, but I had a moment when for a period of time, my life could have been much like the experience of those who lost time. Those who had been told they would die,in months or weeks. They were told it was terminal.
Your skepticism has shortened your view of what life can be. You have placed a wall in front of your vision, you are missing something. You are denying yourself life!
Cancer is only has ungly as you want to make it. You have denied yourself to live and in so doing you have deminished all of us.
Cancer is a symptom, living life fully takes character and inspires all of us.
Now, Brian, bless his heart he put the story on film. His passion of film making, put together something worth seeing.
I appreciate and thank you Brian, you did a great job!