MATTERS

My friend Sally had surgery on Wednesday. When the doctor received the pathology report on Friday, he told her the tumor in her brain was a Glioblastoma, a highly aggressive form of cancer. She will start getting daily chemotherapy and radiation treatments next week. The prognosis isn’t encouraging.

When she came home from the hospital, I took dinner over to her house and sat with her so her husband could run a few errands. We’ve set up a CaringBridge website to help keep people informed and allow friends to volunteer to bring dinner or drive her to the daily chemo and radiation treatments. Friends are lining up to help, and we are all wishing we could do more.

Sally is a fighter and a positive thinker. She’s ready to do whatever it takes to recover. We had a moment to visit about how this kind of a diagnosis makes a person take a hard look at what matters in life.

Sally said, “When you come right down to it, the only thing that really matters is loving and being loved. Nothing else is all that important.”

She’s right. It’s so easy to get caught up in the minutiae of our daily routines and spend a tremendous amount of time and energy doing things that in the end just won’t matter.

Sally is embarking on a difficult and scary journey. None of us know what the outcome will be, but we do know that regardless of what happens, she will have what matters most in her life – people to love and people who always love her back.