balance

Since my last post, I’ve really been on a roller coaster ride. On one hand, things have been really good, the business is moving along, and for the most part my mom feels fine, but on the other hand there’s some scary stuff out there. But I guess really that’s the way life is. There’s always some “scary stuff” potentially just around the bend, and it’s really amazing how much more weight the scary stuff seems to carry. It’s definitely true that my mom has a mammoth hill to climb to full recovery and in fact if you look at the statistics, you’d say that the survival rate doesn’t look good. But none of that matters anymore. We’re not looking at the scary stuff, we’re not giving it any weight. And the only stat I know is that Laurie Putt’s survival rate is 100%. Because I believe that beating a disease within the body isn’t about statistics, miracle drugs, or miracle doctors. It’s not out of your control. It’s all within you, it’s all inside you, and it can ultimately be freed by you. I don’t think we’ve figured out how to do this yet (obviously), but I know it is possible to heal yourself. It just makes sense that just as you can wiggle your toes by thinking it, you can heal yourself by thinking it (focusing on the right thing). It bothers me that people put so much weight in modern medicine to “save them.” There definitely is some amazing stuff that can be accomplished by some pills and surgeries, but none of that can heal you unless you allow it.

For those of you who have met my dad, you know he is a pretty loud, easy going, yet stubborn guy who will rarely take no for an answer. He’s been known to fight with the airlines, hotel chains, rental car agencies, and just about anyone else who has ever given him poor customer service and tried to charge him for it. So it was no surprise last year when he faced off with a deadly case of necrotizing pancreatitis, he blew right through it. If you don’t know anything about the pancreas (why would you?), it’s extremely sensitive and pretty much any problems with it are deadly. Pancreatic cancer has a near 0% survival rate, pancreatitis is usually no big deal if treated properly, but necrotizing pancreatitis (when the pancreas’ enzymes begin digesting itself) is almost always deadly. That’s what my dad developed last August. He went from eating a business lunch in Austin, TX on a tuesday, to riding in an ambulance on tuesday evening, to breaking out of the hospital in a haze-fighting with doctors and nurses (it wasn’t my dad, it was some effects of the pancreatitis affecting his brain) , to being found in an alley near his hotel (4 miles from the hospital), to needing life saving surgery (they decided not to), to getting back on the phone complaining about service a week later. Needless to say, it was an agonizing week for my family. He was fine, he was crazy, he was going to die, he was fine. So I know that his stubbornness ultimately pulled him through (with the help of some good doctors). And I know only one other person in this world more stubborn than my dad, my mom.

The survival rate for laurie putt is 100%.
If you know anyone who is currently fighting cancer, you can order them the shirt I’ve created for my mom to wear to her treatments. Zazzle.com is ana amazing website that lets you create a t-shirt with ease. Check her’s out here (she ordered the pink version, but you can get any color)