Some upbeat thoughts for your Saturday

I'm new posting to the board but I've been around a while. I know how important it is to break the monotony of treatment, options, advice so I'm going to share a personal story. Stop reading now if this kind of thing just bores you or you are super-serious about learning. This post is about fun my suffering brothers.

I'm an idiot. Let's just get that out of the way. I love oddly funny things and I really delight in catching people off-guard. When I started showing the signs of treatment I tired quickly of the furtive glances people would take. "Yeah person I've never met, I know it looks like God put a zipper up the side of my neck, thank you for pointing out how it's impossible to miss." [smile Kelly, remember to smile. You look creepy if you don't!]

How to deal with this?....I've got it! Camouflage! Give them something else to look at. Brilliant!

OK, so I go to a friend of mine who runs a print shop and have a shirt made: "I love NED!" in a bright red heart. Impossible to miss, I wonder will anyone get the joke or will no one even care (I do live on the west coast, it's VERY liberal here).

I was totally, completely, blissfully unprepared for what would happen the first time I wore it. No one said anything for the first few minutes of my maiden voyage in Wal-Mart and I thought "Well this was a fail." Then right beside the apples it happened. The first of SO many times this EXACT thing has happened to me when I wear NED...

From my left a woman breaks away from her husband and walks straight towards me. We make eye contact and she smiles hugely then gives me a "I missed you SO much!" hug that nearly takes my breath. She'd seen my scar but made no mention, her only words to me were "I love NED too."

To be honest it got kinda awkward right then. The husband wasn't really in on what was going on and was trying to figure out who was tugging on his gal. I smiled at her and said "Good luck" and we parted ways.

Like I said, first of SO many stories that damn shirt has made. NED has taken a life of his own around my house. We went to the mall in Eugene and my wife said "NED can't go! I won't get any shopping done!" like he's now a member of the family. NED is my buddy in this journey and I probably will ask to be buried in that shirt when the time comes.

Anyway guys the point is you have to find your peace with this ugly blight on the human condition. NED was just some dumb thing I did but it blossomed into this incredible window into the human condition where other sufferers use NED to share a moment with someone who they see has punched the membership card like them.

Go make your own NED. I promise you won't regret it.