Surviving is important, Thriving is elegant

My name is Rina and I am going to thrive after beating my fifth round with Melanoma. Currently I am 37 years old, a mother, a wife, a sister, a friend and a business owner. My belief is that I have way to much left in this world to do, including meeting and holding my grandchildren and with my daughter Reyla only being six, I have a long fight left ahead of me. Five years ago was my first "suspicious mole" and since then, there have been multiple surgies, chemotherapy, lukeine and interferon shots, more surgery and then while in Hawaii in May 2007; double over and got to see how the locals live, in the Maui Medical Center, just what I wanted several more tumors now blocking my upper intestine. My best friend Laura was with me and we flew home to Charleston, SC for 7 days of a wonderful, ha ha; hospital stay, the worst surgery yet, to remove the tumors and a few inches of my upper intestine, from everything I have read, we don't need all of it so that part seems to be just fine. My surgeons tried to remove the five spots on my liver that formed but my body said, "I don't think so" and started bleeding profusely so they closed me up and now... three months later, four opinions later, we are starting a new treatment on Thursday of this week, Ipilumamaub (sp?). This should not be too rough a treatment as 10 months of chemo and shots every other day was TERRIBLE, this should be a walk in the park.

37 and stage IV melanoma, what does that mean to me, it means FIGHT, get the gloves on and FIGHT. Crazy, Sexy Cancer was given to me by my dear friends Tom and Sarah and I can't put it down and we are all planning a pot luck dinner and ok, maybe some wine on August 29th to watch the movie created based on the book.

To all of you out there, FIGHT, we need to be the new face of cancer and NOT give up hope, there are some days where I don't want to get out of bed but most days I make it out to fix breakfast for my daughter, get her dressed and off to school and then tend to the business of running my business.

Love to all of you that are fighting this fight,

Rina