9/30/12 – Today was the BIG event hosted by the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center: The 4th Annual Celebrate Life and Liberty. The event is intended to celebrate survivorship and give inspiration and support to those in the cancer community who are still in treatment or recovery. This free celebration was held in Liberty State Park, NJ. Attendees explored a wide-range of interactive activities for adults and children, such as yoga and there were musical performances by a number of the cancer survivors and the cancer center doctors and nurses. In addition, more than 15 cancer advocacy organizations provided information about their services for all aspects of cancer care, support, and survivorship.
The main feature of this event was a special performance by the legendary Aretha Franklin. She was amazing and performed for about 90 minutes.
Personally, the biggest part of the event was that I was one of the cancer survivors who performed on stage. I also had my daughter Alli on stage with me. We played Bob Marley’s “One Love/People Get Ready”. I decided on that song because I felt it captured the spirit of the event. For cancer survivors to say: “Let’s get together and feel alright.” just seemed so awesome to me. By no means are Alli and I professional performers but we certainly had a blast. Having this experience, with my daughter of celebrating my health in front of others, is something I will remember forever. My daughter Jill taped our performance with her iPhone and it is now available on YouTube. Below are links to our time on the stage. I hope you enjoy it.
Video of us being introduced:
Video of our performance:
And because I like all the readers of this blog so much, here is a video of one of Aretha’s performances at the event:
It was truly an amazing event and it was even better to see many people I went through my treatments with. It was great to see that everyone was doing so well.
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
I am planning to post my next update in February after I get my scan results.
More to come…
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