Okay. I found the pictures. They are saved to the camera, not the camera card. Ugh. How in the Sam Hill did that happen? At least they aren't lost. I hope to show you my fun weekend after I get a cord to download them.
Wings Cancer Center had a small meet and greet today for Sean Swarner. He's a two time cancer survivor who has climbed to the top of the world seven times. Once he completes going to the North and South Poles, he will have won the climbing Super Bowl. He'll be the first man to complete all of the great peaks of the Earth.
When Sean was thirteen, he was given four months to live. But despite the fears of his doctors, he survived. His body was sixty pounds overweight. He was bald. Sean didn't mind that people stared. He cared that they didn't understand what he was going through. His father bought him a green t-shirt emblazoned on the front with the words, "I don't always look like this...". The back read, "I'm on chemo." The stares turned to questions of compassion and concern. That shirt was passed on to another child when he completed his treatments. It was to be passed forward to the next as a talisman for success.
At last count, the doctors said the shirt had been given to thirty children. All cancer free.
Several years later, when Sean had turn sixteen, he had a routine cancer screening. The doctors found a new sarcoma in his lung. It was an aggressive form. They gave him fourteen days to live. Not from the cancer, but from the treatment. He was put into a medically induced coma. His entire sixteenth year was spent sleeping. While his friends were out picking up girls and getting a driver's license, he was perusing dreams.
And getting better.
After a complete recovery, he put the cancer in his past. Sean went to college. Had some fun. A lot of fun.
Slowly, he realized that he was the person he had become because of his cancer. He needed a new challenge. He scaled Everest. Denali. Kilamanjaro. All seven of the highest places in the world.
Sean quotes, "Humans can survive thirty days without food. The human condition can exist three days without water, but it cannot exist thirty seconds without hope."
Sean has been cancer free for ninteen years.
He passed out bracelets that read, "Keep climbing". I'm wearing mine right now.
I remember telling one of friends that I was given the summer off. I was cancer free for two months. She said, "See? You can do anything! You should climb Everest!"
I told her, "I think I just did."
