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Cancer and more

So I’ve been away for quite a while, and I’d like to explain why. My wife was diagnosed with Stage Four Large B Cell Lymphoma (a somewhat aggressive blood cancer) back in late January of this year. Initially we checked into the hospital for three weeks on January 21, precisely one day after my last blog post, and we’ve been in and out of the hospital ever since. In regards to her chemotherapy treatment, we do five days in the hospital and 16 days back at home, and at first the majority of my time was spent taking care of her. I’m elated to report that she is doing AMAZING right now, healing fantastically, and the treatment has been working beautifully all along. We’re about to finish her sixth and final round of chemo this coming week and are anticipating a cancer-free PET scan later next month.

I won’t fill you in on the past four months of details, but if you’d like more to know more about the entire journey we’ve been on since then, please visit www.saraandjayme.com, as I’ve been updating this special blog periodically to keep our friends and family up to speed with her prognosis.

I bring all of this up for a few reasons:

1) To explain my absence these past few months
2) To announce my return to blogging, podcasting and uploading videos to my YouTube channel
3) To remind you of how fragile life is

We’ll start with the first reason, where I’ve been. Actually, this one is pretty self-explanatory. I’ve been dealing with one of the most horrible experiences of my life, which has kept me quite busy. I’ve been making Facebook posts and such, but never really got around to making an established announcement to all of you. I wish I had, but when you’re going through this kind of thing, you really just don’t feel like doing anything. These months have been an explosive cocktail of triumph and despair, excitement and depression, motivation and laziness; I’ve had a hard enough time just keeping up with everything myself. So, all things considered, I apologize for dropping off the map like that.

Now that we’re reaching the end of all of this, I’m getting excited to come back to my musical habits and routines. At one point I didn’t even touch my bass for nearly two months, and I cannot explain to you the sense of release and relaxation that I felt the moment I began making music again. I forget often that music is immensely therapeutic and can soothe the soul in a way that you simply cannot express with words. I’m honored to do what I do and am beyond excited to begin sharing it with you all again. I cannot guarantee that I’ll return FULL TIME to my previous routine (weekly bass-blogs, podcasts, free instructional videos and answering every social media comment/question/email) until we get the green light from her doctors that she’s 100% cancer free, but I’ll be creeping my way back into it as of this week.

I’d also like to share a quick thought with you, as I’m sure you can imagine, one does not walk through something like this without learning a thing or two. It’s unfortunate that you can’t pass through the fire without being burned, but it does help you to see things like you never did before. You can read the above mentioned blog for more insight, but for now I’ll just leave it to this:

Life is too short.

There’s no guarantee that there’s a tomorrow, and everything you know and love can change in an instant so fast that you’ll be face-up seeing stars before you realize you’ve been knocked down at all. Take every moment you have to tell the people around you that you love them, that you’re thankful for them and that you appreciate them. Don’t waste your time doing the things you don’t like doing. Do the things you LOVE doing, that you can’t get enough of. Don’t worry about what you think that you have to do, the things that need to be done, or what you think is important. Nothing, besides your family, is as important as you think it is.

I’m not saying don’t pay your bills or let your house foreclose, but I am saying that about 99% of the things that we focus most of our daily efforts on are not deserving of that much attention. Trust me when I say that I’m speaking from experience here.

So, with that, I’d like to also say that I am grateful for all of you who have supported us through this difficult time. We are excited to move on from this and I look forward to putting all of this behind us. Also, I look forward to playing my bass again every day and I cannot wait to share my musical journey with all of you.

Take care, stay well, and know that you are loved.

Jayme