When life gives you lemons…

Twenty years ago, this week I finished my last chemotherapy for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. The notes in my diary from that day simply state, “This is my final treatment and I thought it would never be finished. I kept watching for the last drop.”

That was a long time ago. Even though my diagnosis is considered treatable but not curable, the longer I remain in remission the lower the odds are of recurrence. That was true at ten and fifteen years. It is especially true, this week at twenty! I am blessed to have had a tolerable treatment regimen and a favorable outcome.

Many of you know that our family took my diagnosis combined with the loss of my father to leukemia and turned it into a passion of raising money for blood cancer research. Over the past nineteen years our family (The Blanton Bunch) has raised and donated over $565,000 to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Lemons to Lemonade, my friends! The only answer for blood cancers is funding research for a cure.

I can’t believe it has been twenty years…