May their friendship never end

As I leave the car in the parking lot, I watch as a loving young woman helps her friend walk into the hotel lobby. I notice the friend is wearing a scarf around her head and looks very frail and weak. I admire the young woman who is helping her friend. What a tremendous gift to have such a sweet friendship.

When I enter the hotel lobby, I hear the front desk worker talk with the two ladies. The friend with cancer is here for one final battle with the beast. I can hear in the young woman's voice the desperation for her friend to have a triumphal victory. The front desk worker says, "There is always hope. We will not stop hoping until everything had been tried." The desk clerk's words of wisdom gives great comfort to the young woman.

As I make my way to the elevator, I think about the events I just witnessed. These two woman are here in search for a cure. For me, medicine is different. Will my doctor at tomorrow's appointment give me a path to a disease-free life? Will my doctor be able to offer anything which will lessen the burden of my disease or decrease the severity of my symptoms? The answer to all these questions is "no". When I go to my medical appointments, there is never any hope of every recovering. The only thing my doctors can do is provide urgent antibiotics for infections. Since there is no cure for any of the medical conditions I have, there is never any expectation my doctors can do anything to stop disease progression. And this is probably one of the hardest mental challenges one faces when chronically ill.

For years, I sought medical professional after medical professional hoping there was something, anything which might help me. Yes, there have been many instances where life-saving medicine was administered to me in the events of anaphylactic reactions, sepsis, organ failure, etc., but towards the cure of my medical ailments, nothing has been offered. Instead, it is day after day of dealing with endless symptoms. With each month and each year, I see my health slip away. Some times it happens slowly--the muscles in my feet started contracting involuntarily a few years ago; now they are almost always constantly contracted which makes it hard to place my feet flat on the ground. Other times, the medical decline happens almost overnight--one day I can breathe on my own, the next I am on a BiPAP machine and a few months later I am on a ventilator. It is often hard to come to terms with the complexities of ever-changing health.

I pray everything goes well for the two woman I met at the hotel. What a tremendous gift it is to have wonderful support during such great times of trial. Their friendship is such a beautiful expression of love. May it never fail.

"Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails" (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).