December 21, 2000| (taken from Message Board)

Well, the new word.

First, thank you all for your prayers, thoughts, emails and gifts. They have sustained me during this most difficult of weeks. I have tons of emails to respond back to, so if you don’t hear from me in awhile, know that someday I will finish replying to all of them. I haven’t forgotten about you, trust me.

Seond, I have been given the OK to go home for Christmas to Ohio. Very fortunately, my parents were able to get tickets for my flights, so I will not be alone. I will be leaving Friday afternoon and returning to NYC on Monday afternoon (treatment bright and early on Tuesday afternoon).

The pain has gotten better. Not much, but manageable.

It took one last test, but the MRI with dye showed what we were looking for, the cause of the pain. It’s not the lymph nodes in my back, it is individual lesions of cancer along my verterbrae up my back. I don’t know exactly what a lesion is, but I don’t like the sound of it. I think it is like a little cut or buildup of cancer cells on the verterbrae.

Distressingly Dr. Moskowitz doesn’t know what he wants to do next because of these lesions. The stem cell is on hold. Maybe more chemo next, only he knows.

Personally, this is going into my soul, I am having rougher time not with the disease, but with the uncertainty and unexpectedness of these lesions. Just when I thought I had this thing licked. I keep on fighting and getting up, but this things keeps on kicking me down. It’s getting harder and harder to pick myself up and get up. I am running out of strength to do it. It makes me even more scared to realize that I could battle this the rest of my life, and that I will have to continue to get myself up.

I have never really thought it was appropriate to pray for a miracle. I just wanted to be healed, that’s all. I pray now for a miracle all the time. That’s what I am going to need. I fight hard, this cancer fights harder. I need a miracle to beat this thing.

I am also praying that this suffering and pain will be over by March 2001. I guess if I want to see results of prayer, I need to pray specifically. Please, God, let it be March. Let it by March. Let it be a miracle.

Have a Merry Christmas y’all. Thank God for all the blessings we’ve been given. And the most precious one of them all.