Day 112: It's Not About the Cap

Sunday, December 30, 2007 - Several of you noticed, way back at Day 48, that Lance Armstrong (seven-time consecutive winner of the Tour de France and cancer survivor) had left a comment to Mady on this blog. We had given him one of Mady's Cancer Sucks bracelets via our friends Kim and Bob (who are highly involved in cancer charity work through the Connecticut Challenge... more on that great event in a future post).

Kim said that Lance thought the bracelet was cool, and he told her that he shared the sentiment completely. The post was from Lance along with Doug Ulman (president of the Lance Armstrong Foundation). Mady was very impressed that they wrote to her.

A few weeks later, Mady got a package in the mail. It contained a LiveStrong cap inscribed to Mady and signed by Lance!

Amazingly, it turned out that the cap was completely unrelated to the bracelet and blog post--it was orchestrated by my friend Kathy in Austin. Her kids attended the same pre-school as Lance's twin daughters and her son Joey was friends with them. She mailed Lance the cap, a sharpie pen, postage, an address label to Mady, and a letter about her cancer. He signed the cap and mailed it to her.

Mady keeps the cap in a place of high honor: It's proudly displayed on her lovely wig and pink wig-stand in her room, as seen in the picture above. Thanks Lance (and Kathy)!

Current Mady update: Her neutrophil counts are way low this week (ANC around 100) and this postponed her scheduled chemo by a week (at least). This is a mixed blessing: It was nice to see her more during my vacation week, but her treatment is very proscribed and the doctors prefer not to see too many gaps. Plus, it just effectively extends the end date...

Oh, and we just got back from a walk around Turtle Pond (one of our family's favorite hikes, right here in Belmont at Habitat)--we hadn't been there in a long time. Mady was quite tired, but her lack of energy was more than made up by Buttercup... who basically pulled us the entire way.

Here's a picture we took today in front of Turtle Pond (if you click on the photo and enlarge it, you'll notice that Buttercup is actually slightly airborne):











We had a great holiday and we hope you did also! -tk