Pride.....in the name of love.

This last weekend was one of the best weekends I can remember in a long time. It was wonderful not just because we got to do some amazing things but it was wonderful because of the journey to reach this point.

This journey is part of a long story which I will try and share with you all as succinctly as I can. But it starts back in the 1980s! OK I know that sounds like it's going to be super long so I'll try and keep it brief.

Back in 1986 I was lucky enough to go to an American summer camp, the camp I went to was in Minnesota way up North and it was called Kamaji. This was, without a doubt, one of the best things that could ever happen to me and my time there was to prove life changing. Because of my summers spent at Kamaji I decided to become a teacher of outdoor education, because of my summers spent at Kamaji I developed a love of all things american, especially Minnesotan, because of my summers at Kamaji I have spent the last 30 years travelling back and forth to the States to visit friends, because of my summers at Kamaji I met the most wonderful and brilliant group of women anyone could ever want to meet. And because of my summers at Kamaji I became part of something so special it is still as strong and powerful today as it was back then.

Over the years I have kept in touch with many of the friends I made at camp and with FB have managed to reconnect with many more. Four summers ago marked the 100th anniversary of Camp Kamaji and to celebrate this the lovely camp Directors Mike and Kathy hosted a reunion. If I had to pick the best weekend ever-ever it might well be those few days spent in the Northwoods reconnecting with all the wonderful camp friends from days gone by and by. Many of the women I met at the reunion were young girls when I was there as a counsellor 30 years ago and are now women with their own children and grown up lives, and yet it felt like nothing had changed, it felt so easy to slip right back into those camp roles, those camp friendships.

Anyway that's a little bit of the background of the most important part of this weekend. To cut a long story short I mentioned some months ago on FB that U2 were touring their Joshua Tree album but that they were only doing a few European dates and that this meant tickets were really hard to get and super pricey.

This comment was picked up by Emily, a friend from Kamaji and as it happens an absolute U2 super fan, and absolute super human. She jumped on this like an otter on a wriggling fish and over the last few months tried to work on U2's management team to try and get hold of tickets for the London show. This literally went on for months, but as the weeks went by and the concert date got closer and closer she heard nothing from U2. Now, Emily was a young camper when I last knew her but what I now know of her is that she is one of those amazing people that when she sets out to do something she doesn't give up but just gets more and more determined to make it happen. 

View from our seats.

Back in May Emily told me that she was going to try and get the U2 tickets a different way and within a few days, with the help of Kat Martin, the present lovely Camp Director and the Kamaji Alumni, she had them! The different way Emily managed to get two brilliant seats right near the stage in Twickenham Stadium in London was sisterhood. Those women and girls I went to camp with 30 years ago all got together, led by Emily, and raised the money to buy those two tickets. It is hard to put into words just how awesome and humbling this is. All I want to do in this blog is try to express to all those women how incredibly grateful I am, how incredibly lucky I am and how much I will never forget this amazing act of kindness by all those beautiful people from Kamaji many of whom I haven't seen in years.

I have thought long and hard about how to thank all those friends that made this possible, Emily told me every single person who contributed and perhaps I could mention all the names here? However I think the best way is for me to simply say that this one act of incredible kindness has been the best thing to happen to me and if this disease has taught me anything it is the power of friendship, the power of uniting together against something. In a world where it is sometimes hard to find the good stuff this has been a shining light and the light has been shining for months now, actually for most of the time I have been going in and out of hospital and having various treatments I always knew that there was Emily in the background trying to make something truly special happen....and she did with this act of pure kindness.

The weekend was just brilliant, from the moment we got off the train in a steaming hot London and were met by a sea of rainbow flags. At first I thought maybe London knew that the camp symbol was a rainbow and that the whole city was celebrating with us, but of course it was the Pride March and our hotel in Trafalgar Square was right in the middle of it all. The night in this fabulous hotel was also a generous gift from a camp friend, Schoen, who had managed to get us pretty much the last room in the whole city, and what a room!

We had the best time milling around in the joyous atmosphere of the Pride march, and doing press ups in the crowds and then headed off across the city to Twickenham. No easy feat as there must have been close to a million people on the march and it seemed most of them were in between us and the station.
Finally we were in the stadium and the concert lived up to all my expectations and more. As soon as Bono, The Edge, Adam and Larry started playing we were jumping in the air, tears filled my eyes as I couldn't believe we were actually there and couldn't believe how we had managed to get there and that the last time I heard U2 play live was back in the 1980s when I was obsessed with all things camp and here I was back again because of all things camp! 

Emily mentioned in a message to me some weeks ago that she hoped that this concert would be a light through the painful memories of the treatment for this cancer. Gosh it is so much more than that, the concert, the weekend, the hotel but mostly the friendship. When the cancer is long gone, the friendships and this gesture will be there....forever!
On Wednesday afternoon I went back into hospital for my final spinal chemo, and the first thing Dr. Veale asked about was the concert because he worked hard to make sure my treatments didn't interfere with going to London... how awesome is that? 

This week I have had a few more tests to check I'm strong enough to have the transplant and then at the end of July I have a final scan. This will hopefully show that the cancer is in remission so I can go ahead with the final big chemo treatment with the stem cell support. I know I have got to this point in the treatment thanks to all the support from my  most brilliant friends. Friends who have travelled the planet to find special places to do press ups, friends who have helped Di and Rachel raise nearly £3000 for the Lymphoma Association, friends who joined together to send us to The Joshua Tree, and friends who have just always been there. I have such.....
Pride, in the name of love for them all.