My Narrative + the Things I Left Out

If you haven't seen The Princess Bride, you need to, especially since I am about to make references to it in this and the coming posts.

Because I [and a couple of other people] consider my life "epic," the following paraphrase from this movie seems completely appropriate:

Inigo says to Wesley something like, “Let me tell you, No, let me explain, No, let me sum-up.”
So here is my "Sum Up."
Thirty years ago I went into remission from childhood cancer.

The chemotherapy I took led to a bunch of nasty side effects,[http://www.stjude.org: look at the published long-term follow-up study] but the left over consequence I am focusing on for this narrative is the enlarged heart. For most of my growing up years, my heart did not really cause problems IF I did not overly tax it...
However when I was in high school [1991], my brother came home on leave from the military, and the whole family got sick with a strep infection. Everybody but me recovered after just one round of antibiotics....my infection? Well, when I got this strep infection, it went to my heart...damaging it in such a way that my doctors in Abilene, Dallas, and Houston reported to my family that I had perhaps 5 years to live.

So, I had my Make*A*Wish trip, I struggled through classes at school, et al.

But activities don't really explain how this changed the essential me inside [my id, my ego, my spirit, my soul, you get the idea].

The Essential Me made a 180 degree turn around...while I had been suffering from the teenage angst, now I was eager to get down to the business of forming of WHO, or rather WHOSE, I wanted to be. The LORD lifted me hardly seems an adequate explanation, but that is EXACTLY what happened. I learned what adults meant when they said that JESUS was the Best Friend you could ever have. I made the choice that HE would be just that for the rest of my life...something I have never regretted.

This is the end of the "Sum Up"
Stay Tuned for More...