No man is an island

Zé wrote a post about how much fun it is for the girls to stay behind with tio Armindo and Tia Didija and about how we get to be spoiled by tio Jorge Pedro and tia Maryanne when we are in NYC. He also wrote about the "mini-convention" of Retro Lipo Travellers that took place in the treatment room last week. The liposarcoma stories that were shared, were nothing more than stories of hope. Two topics, I wanted to write about, but since, as always, Zé wrote it a thousand times better, I am just going to copy/paste from his blog.

Elsa's Drug
written by Zé

For the past few weeks, as those who check Elsa's blog know, Elsa and I have been traveling to New York City, to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she is trying out a new drug. The traveling back and forth has been very tiresome, but hopefully worth it. She has found three other people that are taking the same drug. One lady has almost the same history as Elsa. Apparently there is a lot of hope and expectations riding on this drug. There are quite a number of people taking the drug, because it worked so dramatically on a patient who happened to have a liposarcoma, just like Elsa. Every time we go there, we hear of more people getting on the drug. They are all very hopeful people who have made a very calculated bet on science. They all have stories of struggle against this horrible disease, but they all share a common attitude that science will come up with a solution to their problem. I, for one, believe this is the correct attitude and have always encouraged Elsa to approach her battle this way.

But even if it is tiresome and sometimes stessful, like when I have to deal with NYC traffic, these trips have also had their moments of fun. Every week Elsa and I stay overnight at my uncle Jorge Pedro's and aunt Maryanne's house were we are pampered and regaled with stories like only he can recount.Tios Didija and Armindo stay with Maya and Filipa, at our house, while we are away, which I think is also a joyful time for them. Although it is a difficult ordeal to go through, our family has been supperb to us in helping us deal with it. I am reminded of the Donne poem: "

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main ...

Indeed!