Laurianne's Hope

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Don't Pass Gas

I will not pass gas in my house
I will not pass gas near my spouse
I will not pass gas in your face
Because the gas I pass is worse than mace
A silent by deadly cloud of toxic waste.

The End

What does this have to do with lung cancer awareness? Click the link and find out:

http://www.dontpassgas.org/

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Lung Cancer AwarenessPosted by Lynda :: 8:21 PM :: 1 people are more aware
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Sunday, July 22, 2007

Just Thinking About You

It is 21 months today that we lost Laurianne. After all this time it is still hard to believe that she is gone and it seems like a bad dream. We are fortunate to have Calem and we see a lot of things in him what we used to see in his mother. Today is also the day my mother passed away in 1999. We are burning a candle for both of them today.

Lung Cancer AwarenessPosted by Henry (Calem's Opa) :: 9:46 PM :: 0 people are more aware
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Friday, July 20, 2007

A Wish Come True

No matter how big or small, you can still get lung cancer.

A Wish Come True
Written by Letitia Baldwin


The Ellsworth America
Thursday, July 05, 2007

Sullivan Boy with Lung Cancer Gets a Playground of His Own


SULLIVAN — He’s swung to his heart’s content at Jordan’s Snack Bar, patrolled the ramparts of the Dr. Charles C. Knowlton School Community Playground, flown down the slide next to the Sorrento-Sullivan Recreational Center and knows his way around just about every other playground in Hancock County.

Gabriel Grant’s eyes, though, grew very big when he spied the elaborate playground that magically had sprung up late last week in the front yard of his Transfer Station Road home in East Sullivan.

It had been thrilling enough for the 2½-year-old boy to sit up front with Sullivan firefighter Ken Gray and go for a spin in the Sullivan fire truck.

Helped down from the fire truck, Gabriel took a little coaxing before he climbed up on the 30-foot-wide cedar structure made by Cedarworks in Rockport. The blue-eyed towhead cooled off in the canopied cupola, hoisted the bucket, spun the steering wheel, fiddled with the play phone, and explored every other feature of the new playground provided by the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Maine.

“We chase playgrounds,” Tabitha Coombs, the 2½-year-old’s grandmother and legal guardian, related last Friday.

Coombs had warm words for the kindness shown by Make-A-Wish volunteers Ron and Joanne Hamilton when the Ellsworth couple asked her grandson whether there was anything special he wished for.

“People I hardly knew. I feel there’s a bond there,” Coombs said.

On Feb. 2, Grant was diagnosed with pulmonary blastoma (PB), a form of lung cancer, which is highly rare among children. The child had been plagued by a severe cough, initially diagnosed as bronchitis, which got much worse one night.

“He got coughing really badly in the middle of the night,” his grandmother recalled. “It sounded like someone had popped an air mattress.”

In the United States, only 24 pediatric cases of PB are reported annually. The Sullivan boy’s lung cancer was caught before it transitioned into the disease’s second stage. The same month as his diagnosis, the 2½-year-old started a weekly regimen of chemotherapy at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. He is nearly halfway through his treatment.

“Gabe is really doing great,” Coombs said proudly. “You really can’t keep him down.”

All Friday, Coombs, her partner Scott Lee and the Hamiltons tried to keep the energetic Gabriel occupied while a two-man crew from Rent-A-Husband, a Portland-based business, spent the day assembling the multifaceted playground. The Holiday Inn in Ellsworth put up the crew overnight for free as its gesture to make Gabriel’s dream come true.

“A lot of kids go to Disney World and they are done. What makes this so cool is the fact Gabe will be able to enjoy this for years,” Ron Hamilton remarked.

Coombs, who originally lived in a tent and van before building her modest home on the Sullivan property, agreed. She plans to add a sandbox and small wading pool to the play area.

“It’s no Taj Mahal,” she said, watching her grandson explore the playground. “But it’s home.”


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Lung Cancer AwarenessPosted by Lynda :: 3:30 PM :: 0 people are more aware
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Tuesday, July 17, 2007

I Believe

I believe-
that we don't have to change friends
if we understand that friends change.

I believe-
that no matter how good a friend is,
they're going to hurt you every
once in a while and you must forgive
them for that.

I believe-
that true friendship continues to grow,
even over the longest distance.
Same goes for true love.

I believe-
that you can do something in an instant
that will give you heartache for life.

I believe-
that it's taking me a long time
to become the person I want to be.

I believe-
that you should always leave loved ones
with loving words. It may be the last
time you see them.

I believe-
that you can keep going
long after you can't.

I believe-
that we are responsible for what we do,
no matter how we feel.

I believe-
that either you control your attitude
or it controls you.

I believe-
that regardless of how hot and
steamy a relationship is at first,
the passion fades and there had
better be something else to take
its place.

I believe-
that heroes are the people
who do what has to be done
when it needs to be done,
regardless of the consequences.

I believe-
that money is a lousy way of keeping score.

I believe-
that my best friend and I can do anything
or nothing and have the best time.

I believe-
that sometimes the people you expect
to kick you when you're down,
will be the ones to help you get back up.

I believe-
that sometimes when I'm angry
I have the right to be angry,
but that doesn't give me
the right to be cruel.

I believe-
that just because someone doesn't love
you the way you want them to doesn't
mean they don't love you with all they have.

I believe-
that maturity has more to do with
what types of experiences you've had
and what you've learned from them
and less to do with how many
birthdays you've celebrated.

I believe-
that it isn't always enough to be
forgiven by others. Sometimes you
have to learn to forgive yourself.

I believe-
that no matter how bad your heart is broken
the world doesn't stop for your grief.

I believe-
that our background and circumstances
may have influenced who we are,
but we are responsible for who we become.

I believe-
that just because two people argue,
it doesn't mean they don't love each other
And just because they don't argue,
it doesn't mean they do.

I believe-
that you shouldn't be so eager to find out a
secret. It could change your life forever.

I believe-
that two people can look at the exact
same thing and see something totally.
different.

I believe-
that your life can be changed in a matter of
hours by people who don't even know you.

I believe-
that even when you think you have no more
to give, when a friend cries out to you
you will find the strength to help.

I believe-
that credentials on the wall
do not make you a decent human being.

I believe-
that the people you care about most in life
are taken from you too soon.

by Unknown

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Lung Cancer AwarenessPosted by Lynda :: 12:40 PM :: 2 people are more aware
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Monday, July 16, 2007




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Lung Cancer AwarenessPosted by Lynda :: 9:09 AM :: 0 people are more aware
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Monday, July 09, 2007



Beverly Sills is a name from opera even my mom knows. (My mom is not a big opera fan.) In June, Beverly Sills was diagnosed with lung cancer. At the beginning of July, she succumbed to the disease.

Beverly Sills is a perfect example of how quickly lung cancer can progress. I would bet that she really took care of her lungs and voice while in the profession. Many articles have stated she was a non-smoker. Still, she got the disease.

Because of Beverly Sills, and all the people who are fighting this disease, and all that have lost their battle with this disease, we need to find a cure.

Sills transcended opera stages
By RONALD BLUM
Associated Press Writer

In remembering Beverly Sills, Henry Kissinger didn't think about her singing - he never heard her perform.

Their birthdays were two days apart - Sills on May 25, Kissinger on May 27 - and they celebrated some years with joint parties. Kissinger visited her Friday, just before Sills left a hospital and returned home for the final time.

"She gave me many of the records which she recorded, and I listened to those," the former secretary of state said Tuesday, a day after the celebrated soprano died of lung cancer at 78.

"She was a woman of tremendous human intuition and tremendous compassion for others. She had a marvelous understanding of people," he said.

Sills never faded after she retired from singing in 1980 at 51. She handled CEOs and politicians as deftly as Donizetti's high notes, as smoothly as she soothed sopranos and tenors.

"New York, the nation, and the world have lost a leading light and a melodic voice," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

Bubbles, as she was known throughout her life, spent 10 years as general director of the New York City Opera, then served as chairwoman of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and later as chairwoman of the Metropolitan Opera. She became a leading figure on the American cultural scene, hosting TV broadcasts and raising millions of dollars with just a few phone calls.

"New York City, the arts community and music world have lost a major light," former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said. "Beverly Sills' exuberance in spreading the joy and beauty of the opera helped bring it those who might have not been familiar with it."

Sills took on the coloratura repertoire at a time when it was out of favor, shunned by Rudolf Bing's Met, where Verdi, Wagner and Puccini reigned. She became famous at the smaller City Opera, triumphing in Bellini, Rossini, Handel and Massenet.

And, with guest-hosting stints on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" and TV appearances with Carol Burnett, she became the one American opera singer known by the masses.

"I lost one of my best friends ever, and I'm devastated," Burnett said.

Julius Rudel, then City Opera's music administrator, first heard Sills in the early 1950s at the recommendation of her teacher, Estelle Liebling. Sills had to make several auditions before she was hired by the company, then headed by conductor Joseph Rosenstock.

"He was a little concerned about how tall she was," Rudel recalled. "She said, 'I'm happy to come back, but I'm not going to shrink.'"

Sills, about 5-foot-6 according to manager Edgar Vincent, became a giant in the bel canto world, helping revive works that had gone out of fashion, such as Donizetti's three operas about Tudor queens - which still have never been staged by the Met.

Placido Domingo, who starred opposite Sills at City Opera, remembered "beautiful times of bubbling, giggling" nights spent on trips to Los Angeles, Mexico, Peru and other places. In recent years, she gave the tenor advice on his jobs running the Los Angeles and Washington Operas. He was surprised by the speed of her decline in recent weeks.

"We had been planning a dinner for the last year and a half," he said by phone from Madrid, Spain. "We seem to always meet on opening nights with a 1,000 people there. We missed that dinner."

At City Opera and then the Met, Sills influenced a generation of singers - the Met even established an award in her name in 2005.

"There isn't another American singer in the 20th century who managed to accomplish the enormous feat of making opera accessible to the American public," soprano Renee Fleming said. "We shared our first lunch together four years ago, when I was overwhelmed by her generous candor, her vulnerability, and the openness with which she shared her life with me. She gave advice freely, on repertoire, negotiation, on possible career trajectories, and I felt suddenly that I had a much-needed mentor, so many years after she had hired me to sing Mimi in 'La Boheme' at New York City Opera as a beginner." James Conlon, music director of the Los Angeles Opera, remembered attending City Opera performances in the 1960s, then while at Juilliard playing rehearsals as an assistant conductor for one of her performances of Bellini's "Norma."

"She demonstrated that one's commitment to opera doesn't have to stop when the singing is over," Conlon said.

In recent weeks, Sills had been concerned with the future care of Muffy, her daughter, who was born with severe hearing loss. Her son, Bucky, was born with mental retardation, and she spent much of her final years caring for her husband, Peter, who died last September.

"She had a very hard life herself in some respects, but she never talked about it. She was an inspirational person," Kissinger said.

A private funeral was scheduled for Wednesday. Lincoln Center planned to honor Sills with a moment of silence Tuesday night on its plaza, and the New York Philharmonic was to celebrate Sills' life with a conductorless version of Bernstein's overture to "Candide."

The Met hopes to arrange a memorial tribute for August or September.

"Opera has lost its biggest booster and friend," said Met general manager Peter Gelb - hired on Sills' recommendation.

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Lung Cancer AwarenessPosted by Lynda :: 9:26 AM :: 0 people are more aware
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