by nate on Monday, October 19th, 2009 | Friendship, Love, Love Poems, Love Story, Relationship | 6 Comments

I received this on my email, I can’t validate its honesty of the story, but what I am about to share is that I’m amazed of what the couple did…

The girl in the picture is Katie Kirkpatrick, she is 21 . Next to her, her fiance, Nick, 23.

The picture was taken shortly before their wedding ceremony, held on January 11, 2005 in the US .

Katie has terminal cancer and spend hours a day receiving medication.

In the picture, Nick is waiting for her on one of the many sessions of chemo to end.

In spite of all the pain, organ failures, and morphine shots, Katie is going along with her wedding and took care

of every detail. The dress had to be adjusted a few times due to her constant weight loss

An unusual accessory at the party was the oxygen tube that ketie used throughout the ceremony and reception as well.

The other couple in the picture are Nick’s parents. Excited to see her son marrying his high school sweetheart.

Katie, in her wheelchair with the oxygen tube , listening a song from her husband and friends

At the reception, katie had to take a few rests.The pain do not let her to be standing up for long periods

Katie died five days after her wedding day. Watching a women so ill and weak getting married and with a smile on her face makes us think….. Happiness is reachable, no matter how long it last. We should stop making our lives complicated.

Life is short

Break the rules

forgive quickly

kiss passionately, love truly

laugh constantly

And never stop smiling

no matter how strange life is

Life is not always the party we expected to be

but as long as we are here, we should smile and be grateful.

Tags: cancer, Katie Kirkpatrick, morphine shots, Nick, sickness, smiling, terminal cancer, true love, unusual marriage, wedding, wedding ceremony, weight loss

by wildcherry on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 | Inspiration, Life | 3 Comments

I’ve seen his lecture few times before but just realize that he finally passed away on July. For those of you who hasn’t seen it, this might be a life changing lecture :).

Here’s a little bit summary of his situation before his Last Lecture.

“Late in the summer of 2006, I started having some unusual symptoms, culminating with jaudice. Scans revealed it was pancreatic cancer. At this time, my wife Jai and I had a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and a three month old baby.Pancreatic cancer is the most deadly of cancers, with only a 4% 5-year survival rate. The only hope is to be one of the 20% of patients (which I was) where surgery is possible. ”

Dr. Pausch website

More info On Dr. Pausch:

Randolph Frederick (”Randy”) Pausch[2] (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in Columbia, Maryland. Pausch received his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Brown University in 1982 and his PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in August 1988. Pausch later became an associate professor at the University of Virginia, before working at Carnegie Mellon University as an associate professor.

He gave his “The Last Lecture” speech on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon. Pausch conceived the lecture after he learned that his previously known pancreatic cancer was terminal.[3] The talk was modeled after an ongoing series of lectures where top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them, and then give a hypothetical “final talk”, with a topic such as “what wisdom would you try to impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?” The talk was later released as a book called The Last Lecture, which became a New York Times best-seller.

Source Wikipedia

Tags: cancer, cancer patient, dr.pausch, how to deal with cancer, last lecture, lastlecture, life inspiration, pancreatic cancer, the last lecture

by bintangkecil on Monday, June 23rd, 2008 | Family | 2 Comments

How well do you know the word “cancer”?

Well, let’s take the description from wikipedia.org:

Cancer (medical term: malignant neoplasm) is a class of diseases in which a group of cells display the traits of uncontrolled growth (growth and division beyond the normal limits), invasion (intrusion on and destruction of adjacent tissues), and sometimes metastasis (spread to other locations in the body via lymph or blood)

My aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer back in 1998. She had the tumor removed and went through radiation therapy and chemotherapy. She was told by her doctor that she only had 2 years to live at most. Amazingly, she survived. In year 2006 (8 years since she was told that she was going to live until year 2000), she was diagnosed with another brain tumor. This tumor was not a metastasis of the breast tumor. It was a new tumor. It was probably the size of 3cm in diameter. She then had another operation to remove the tumor and went through another chemotherapy. Since she was in Indonesia, I could not visit her that much. Only when I went back to Indonesia, then I will go to Bandung and visit her. She looked so sad and helpless when she was undergoing the second chemotherapy process. Her hair was mostly gone. She also looked really unhealthy. After few years, she was better … until now ..

Again, she found another lump on her breast. She actually already noticed it a year ago but she did not want the family to know and worry about her, or she may also does not want to go through the painful chemotherapy nor radiation therapy again.

What happened to her is very very sad for all of us but it made me think twice (actually maybe more than twice :P) about life. She is still alive though … so that’s the good news

When I found out that she has another breast tumor a week ago, I started to think what I would do if I’m in her shoe. Would I not tell my family? Would have I trusted the doctor’s word of 2 years max? Would have I done everything that I could within that 2 years period?

What would you do?

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Tags: cancer, disease, Family