Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Team Zachary

I have been feeling very out of sorts. There are various reasons for this. I feel tired more so now then I ever did during the 1st trimester of this pregnancy. I barely sleep most nights. During the past few weeks my sleep has been riddled with worries and thoughts about stupid things I did or said on any given day and frantic thoughts about work/income/a new baby coming in to rock my world.

I have been off. I have not been feeling like myself at all. I am frustrated by this lack of self which I lost at some point during my pregnancy with Matthew and it took me a VERY long time to regain myself after giving birth. I cannot really even put into words how I am feeling. The best way has already been said, I just do not feel like myself.

I am needy, distrustful, nervous, tired, short tempered, you name it that is me. I do not like it. I do not like not being myself. After a long and thoughtful conversation with myself (what you do not talk to yourself?!??!) at midnight last night I am taking charge and not letting this get out of hand any longer... Now I am tired but trying to have a good attitude about the exhaustion. Just bear with me if I continue to seem vague, out of sorts or you know put my big fat foot in my mouth. Hopefully, now that I am done traveling I can get back to the regular routines of life, things will smooth out emotionally for me.

As some of you have read, I have told in short the story of Zachary. He is the son of the owners of the company I work for. He is 26 years old and for the past two years has been fighting not one but two kinds of cancer. He is not doing well at all. He has had two stem cell transplants. One was with his own and it did not work. He matched with two donors which is amazing and had a 2nd one a few weeks back. He is in a serious state. This young man truly has courage, faith and strength that my whimpering above puts to shame. If you met Zach, you would like him instantly this I can assure you.

Ann, the owner of the company, writes email updates on Zachary as often as she can. This morning she wrote this and it struck a cord with me:

"I have learned so many lessons from this journey. One of them is that the idea that there are people who give and another group of people who receive is just a silly, silly concept. Everybody gives and everybody receives. Life is about circulation. I can assure you that those who are perceived as 'having much' have received the most. Circulation keeps us all healthy, connected and free of the illusion that somehow we have independently created all that we have or are."

She also wrote: 'He looks horrible. He has lost a significant amount of weight. He has over a thousand blisters covering his body that make picking up a tissue painful. He will never be able to go out into the sun because of the radiation damage to his skin. And it not the case that we know if we are winning (against the cancer.) Not until the end of May when they test him again will they have any idea if the cancer is dying.' She said through all this Zach told her:

"Ann," he said, "from this situation I want to find more compassion and help people."


See what I mean about this young man?


If you have not given to a cause this year & are looking for a way to contribute consider doing this for research that can one day help someone you love or even just read about on some random blog. Please consider joining with his family, through the month of April, in a campaign to further support the extraordinary cancer research being conducted by the team at the University of Nebraska.


You can click on this Team Zachary link and go to the University of Nebraska Foundation website where you can contribute by credit card: www.nufoundation.org/teamzachary.

Please pass this along to anyone you know who might be interested to learn more or give to such a cause. And finally without giving anything financially please keep Zach in your thoughts because he sure could use them.

2 comments:

Pickles and Dimes said...

Wow, Zachary is an amazing man.

Coop said...

Hello, my name is Chris Cooper, I work for the University of Nebraska Foundation. I'm so happy to see that you've posted information about Team Zachary on your blog. We've created a very simple Team Zachary "widget" that you or others are free to use. Here's and example of it: http://blog.coopsdomain.com/

The easiest way to add it to your own website or blog is to click the "Get & Share" bar near the bottom.

Thanks again for supporting Team Zachary.