Life Lesson #2

Life isn't fair!  It's good to learn this at a young age, but not necessarily the hard way.  A girl in our town, Mariah, age 15 was diagnosed with Stage III Hodgkin's Lymphoma today.  Her mom, Melissa, is a friend of mine.  Mariah has been sick for a month with pneumonia, fatigue, and now the stomach flu on top of it all.  She is a very bright, musically-inclined, active girl who got blindsided.  The whole family did!  Melissa just thought her daughter was run down and going through life at much too fast a pace.  She didn't expect a serious illness, let alone a cancer diagnosis.  Mariah is taking it pretty well.  She is trying to find the humor in being told you have cancer when you are vomiting from stomach flu.  It's tough to laugh at, but she is trying.  She will have 6 months of chemotherapy followed by radiation treatment and then hopefully she will recover.  She is a determined young woman, and is full of hopes and dreams that will be her strength.  She is supposed to play her bass in the pit orchestra for her high school's play this month.  Instead, she will be in the hospital with hard-core medication on board to kill her cancer cells.  That's a bitter pill to swallow...literally.  Life isn't fair.