Micahs Medical Fund
Donation protected
I hit 50 years old and went for the first dreaded colonoscopy. To be very honest, even though I had absolutely no symtoms I knew in my gut that it wasn't going to turn out right. I also knew that it would be okay so it wasn't as concerning for me, weird I know. Indeed, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 colon cancer. What I didn't think through however, were the side effects I should expect to experience. I didn't think through the pain of chemo, I had heard about the fatigue but I was thinking more along the lines of "I'm tired and going to take a nap" type of fatigue. I didn't expect to be sleeping 18-22 hours a day and deciding that I needed to get some fresh air during those times so walking down from the bedroom and onto the outside deck and what little energy I had at that time, I needed to decide if I should waste it by uncovering the lawn chair (it was Winter) or just sitting on a patch of the deck stairs that had no snow. I stood there as it crossed my mind and then decided, I'd rather sit on the deck then waste that energy pulling off a cover. These were one of many things I was not anticipating.
So I received my diagnosis and as we no doubt all do, immediately began my endless research online. I joined so many forums and I started with the American Cancer Society. On that site I read so much about side effects, surgeries and results and I finally decided to post the most important question of my life "What about my hairrrr??? How much will I lose? Do different cocktails of drugs cause more or less loss?".... Can we say shallow AND denial? The thing is, I'm strong and knew I'd get through it. I've gained strength through my sisters death and how it changed our family and then from my Moms diagnosis of a brain tumor and the 12 surgeries that followed with the final result of her ending up in a nursing home for 15 or so years. My first back surgery after a on the job severe accident of twisting my ankle off my high heel and rupturing a disc because of it. Hey! that's severe, I now have those expensive heels collecting dust on my top shelf so don't you think that's pretty painful to see every day? I've gone from heels to flip flops and that ain't easy for a girl who could have run a marathon in heels so no laughter from the peanut gallery! After a failed back surgery, I went on to a L4/5/S1 fusion and while recovering from that, the cancer hit... of course! Why was all this so easy for me? Three things, I turn everything I can not control over to God. For me, it's really always been that simple. The second thing, if I can't actually see it (my hardware is internal and so was the cancer!) Third, if it's someone I love....I got your back and I'll take care of you! What I knew however was that the loss of hair, the visual of being weak and ill...would be my undoing and weaken me further. Silly, I know but it's who I am.
Enter...Micah Holden. I couldn't do enough research on colon cancer and couldn't ask my silly hair question to enough forums only to get the same reply that just didn't satisfy me. Micah emailed me, I was in Colorado and she in Arkansas. She explained she was a stylist herself and after a few days of stomach pain that was severe, she was admitted to the emergency room where they discovered, stage 4 colon cancer. It was discovered if I recall properly at 44 or 45 and mine at 50. Her email was calm, reassuring that I may get a bit of thinning and more importantly....hair grows back so it's not something I need to be so concerned about. It grows back often times healthier, thicker, curly but it grows back. It wasn't that I didn't know this of course but it was the calmness in her "voice" via email. We began communicating, spoke on the phone a few times and became online friends.
Micah and I went through our surgery a week apart and started 6 months of chemo together. We shared the side effects I soon began to experience after every infusion that would last a week at a time and just as I got stronger, it was time for the next round. We both experienced drinking cold water and our throats shutting down as it felt like a million razors slide down with the water. Mine was more severe as I couldn't breath in cold hair and living in the mountains of Colorado at 10,000 feet in Winter was scary now. We both started having neuropathy and fingers and toes (I'm not sure about her toes) were numbing which caused for dropping a great deal of things and the tingling, razor like senstion on the tips of the fingers. The "chemo brain/fog" kicked in when one day I went in for the infusion and as they asked for each side effect, I said to the doctor "I know it sounds crazy but I feel like I'm losing my mind!". Even now, a year after my last chemo, if I start to multi task (which I could really kick a** at in the past) it seriously feels as if my brain is starting to scramble and then I get anxious and worried that this will never go away or improve even. I would and still forget everything said to me an hour earlier and if you ask me to remember anything, you better send me a email, voice mail and call me! So, we compared notes often and we pushed each other forward. I would tell her to "Cowgirl up" for the next one as I lied to her because inside I didn't know if I could make it to the next one myself. I would test the waters with Micah, hoping she'd tell me that it would be okay if I had to stop but she didn't. Therefore, I had to keep going. I'd test the waters again after the next round but again, she wouldn't let me give up.
During this time, Micah told me that she felt she needed a word to give her strength and she chose the word "Peace". I thought that was a clever idea so I searched and searched in my mind, this word, that word...nothing felt right or fit. As i was recoverying from my fusion and before my diagnosis I adopted a dog from the Humane Society in Colorado Springs (please save a life and adopt). The little terrier mutt was scraggly but as I sat on the floor she came in the room and walked right into my lap. Then she walked into the volunteers lap and I can't say she was like "Oh my God, she's adorable, I MUST have her". She was quite thin (as most are there I suppose) with kennel cough but I was pleased. I called her Pippa (NO, not after the Middleton sister. I'd been collecting future dogs names). I would walk Pippa every day around 10 and if I didn't get off my butt she'd sit with her face infront of my laptop and justttt stareeeee. You can't sit there long with a dog staring you down 10" away so we'd walk. During the worst of my chemo, my 20 hour sleep days she didn't budge, she slept beside me. Pippa sat on my lap every waking moment. I took her everywhere and no matter where that was, she was loved...really, really loved. My friends would say that she was almost human. As we'd speak, she'd look at me, to the other person. Eye contact the whole time. At the dog park they call her the "Pink Streak", not so much for the cute pink snow suit but because she was like greyhound fast for a tiny girl. This dog was the love of my life. So, (I digress) Pippa sat in her usual spot on the console of my Jeep and I looked down at her and said out loud "You're such a joy to me"...My word was born..."JOY".
I decided to have a special gift made for Micah and finding out that she was very creative and an artist, a friend made a stained glass frame with "Peace" in different colors. It was unique and perfect for someone unique like Micah. I didn't tell her but asked for her address and within a few days, I receive a beautiful print with something she made for me! My word "JOY" with a little, brown dog with a crooked ear sitting on the "O"...there was Pippa. It's the most special thing I own.
In the end, we made it out and into remission together but for MIcah, it was short lived.
During this time I decided that 20 years in the mountain has been wonderful but I needed a change, change is good and so are different experiences, friends, foods, states! I left Colorado and loved every minute of driving that big RV myself (I don't think the drivers behind me shared in my enthusiasm though). Whatever, it felt good.
I moved to Houston, one extreme to the other and thought I would learn to adjust to the difference but in fact, I love it and that surprised me! Micahs cancer returned and had spread. She told me that she'd be coming to Houston for tests and you know, I wasn't getting it! You don't leave your doctor to come all the way to MD Anderson unless it's gotten pretty serious but she was so nonchallant about it, so calm and casual that I under estimated the seriousness of it all. I asked about the tests and told her I want to hear right away the results but she didn't really share much as if it wasn't a big deal. What had me pull my head out of the sand was an email from her friend and the word "hospice". HOSPICE? What are they talking about hospice??? This was the first day I cried about "our" cancer. This wasn't what I had planned for my online buddy. At 50, I have a great Dad, a brother and 3 great dogs and I would give them all up without hesitation so she could be with her husband David, her adorable daughter Claire and her son Ford. This just didn't (and still doesn't) make sense to me. She was dying at 45 and I'm kicking myself not "getting it" as I'm posting pictures of me in the pool with my dogs and "life is good" comments and she's quietly, gracefully "liking" my comments. I cry...I just...cry.
I tell you all this above for one reason, to lay out the ground work for how I met this stranger. Micah was a stranger to me and I didn't really know her because she didn't share what she was really all about. I found that out so much later from her friends and now, I see what an amazing woman she was. She was the epity of grace, love as it's meant to be in that it was genuine and with no strings. She was helpful to so many strangers who then became her friends. She appears to really have been a character and a 'goof" as one friend called her. She sang in her church choir and had this incredible voice. As you can see from her sitting in that red chair, absolutely STUNNING looking. Gorgeous naturally where I have stock in Revlon! Micah was humble and didn't talk about her art much but I have come to find out that she was gifted. Some really neat, colorful, fun, intriguing and greatly interesting pieces she's made. So multi-talented in owing her own hair salon and being a stylist, her singing, craft nights, love of giving and helping to anyone that asked. Without reservation, I feel she was one of those rarities that doesn't question should she help this person but felt that person had been sent and she would help without doubting or questioning. I look back now and realize there are no coincidences with us meeting. I would never have met her had I not moved to Houston, she could have contacted any other person on any of those forums and we both had been on many.
I arrived in Arkansas after a 8 hour drive up from Houston and I only came because I needed to attend the prayer meeting they were having at a local church for her. I went knowing the odds of seeing her were slim and that would be okay. I wanted to be in the presence of God and of others that had a connection and strong love of her. Prayer is powerful. There were so many friends and family that deserved to see her before her passing and I really was coming to know her the most....now. Her friends in this community of Searcy, Arkansas are nothing short of amazing. I was given the code to one of her friends home (I'm sure they've since changed it since I threatened to throw their clothes on the drive and take over their home and dog!) My father and I stayed for 2 nights and her dear friend Shane helped me get oriented and picked me up to go meet her. I was really blessed that she wanted to see me, really blessed. This incredible group of women friends who I really felt a sense shrouded her in love and safety. How blessed was she to have that and how blessed were they to have her. We all have good groups of friends but there was something different about these women. These are women that love to great depth for their other girlfriends.
They had moved Micahs hospital bed into her home and I walked in the house and her equally pretty Mom Pam met me, hugged me and I met her brother, husband David and sister in law who loves her as the sisters they really were in spirit. The house smelled of something delicious and as we were coming in, someone was leaving. This little town of Searcy was a very busy corner of the world and all for the love of Micah. I walked in the room and told her to get her butt out of bed because she had a marathon to run! She had lost a lot of weight but still gloriously beautiful. Alert with her beautiful smile that was like a beacon to everyone. I've never walked out of a room, knowing this would be the last time I saw someone. It didn't seem possible that someone so alert, relatively chatty and sitting up smiling could be gone within a matter of a few weeks. The one thing I will never forget about Micah, which I think epitomizes who she was to so many. When I first walked in the room to see her for the last time, she looked at me with the most grateful look in her eyes and she said "I'm honored that you came to see me". SHE was honored to see ME! She had such little time left and yet she was the one that felt honored?!! She was humble, grateful and very special to so many.
I decided that the funeral be best left to very close friends and family. I found out later that all her art work was displayed the night before at visitation, it must have been really wonderful. People can still buy her art work on zazzle.com micah holden and I felt frustrated that I wasn't able to let her beautiful JOY print be shown to the world. I felt as if I needed to contribute somehow to her families medical expenses and other things that cost money at a time like this. I decided that maybe I can have coffee mugs and prints made up and sell them so that all proceeds over and above the cost to have them made go right to the family so I'm in the process of doing that now. I'm afraid however, it will be nice to get donations from the heart but the amount won't be the kind of check I'd like to send to David and his family. I was hoping for something much grander, something as grand as she was and is to so many people.. Then walks in my friend Denny Stever who told me about gofundme. So... this is my story about my online friend Micah. My words certainly don't do her, her friends and family much justice. This world has lost an angel and heaven has had one return to bless others who need it.
I'm requesting anyone so generous of heart to donate anything they can so I can give Micahs lovely family a respite even a few moments of worry about funds and payments and bills. If anyone would like a print of my "JOY", I'd be more than happy to send it to the ends of the earth so just let me know. Again, please help and donate to her family. Sincerely, Tricia
So I received my diagnosis and as we no doubt all do, immediately began my endless research online. I joined so many forums and I started with the American Cancer Society. On that site I read so much about side effects, surgeries and results and I finally decided to post the most important question of my life "What about my hairrrr??? How much will I lose? Do different cocktails of drugs cause more or less loss?".... Can we say shallow AND denial? The thing is, I'm strong and knew I'd get through it. I've gained strength through my sisters death and how it changed our family and then from my Moms diagnosis of a brain tumor and the 12 surgeries that followed with the final result of her ending up in a nursing home for 15 or so years. My first back surgery after a on the job severe accident of twisting my ankle off my high heel and rupturing a disc because of it. Hey! that's severe, I now have those expensive heels collecting dust on my top shelf so don't you think that's pretty painful to see every day? I've gone from heels to flip flops and that ain't easy for a girl who could have run a marathon in heels so no laughter from the peanut gallery! After a failed back surgery, I went on to a L4/5/S1 fusion and while recovering from that, the cancer hit... of course! Why was all this so easy for me? Three things, I turn everything I can not control over to God. For me, it's really always been that simple. The second thing, if I can't actually see it (my hardware is internal and so was the cancer!) Third, if it's someone I love....I got your back and I'll take care of you! What I knew however was that the loss of hair, the visual of being weak and ill...would be my undoing and weaken me further. Silly, I know but it's who I am.
Enter...Micah Holden. I couldn't do enough research on colon cancer and couldn't ask my silly hair question to enough forums only to get the same reply that just didn't satisfy me. Micah emailed me, I was in Colorado and she in Arkansas. She explained she was a stylist herself and after a few days of stomach pain that was severe, she was admitted to the emergency room where they discovered, stage 4 colon cancer. It was discovered if I recall properly at 44 or 45 and mine at 50. Her email was calm, reassuring that I may get a bit of thinning and more importantly....hair grows back so it's not something I need to be so concerned about. It grows back often times healthier, thicker, curly but it grows back. It wasn't that I didn't know this of course but it was the calmness in her "voice" via email. We began communicating, spoke on the phone a few times and became online friends.
Micah and I went through our surgery a week apart and started 6 months of chemo together. We shared the side effects I soon began to experience after every infusion that would last a week at a time and just as I got stronger, it was time for the next round. We both experienced drinking cold water and our throats shutting down as it felt like a million razors slide down with the water. Mine was more severe as I couldn't breath in cold hair and living in the mountains of Colorado at 10,000 feet in Winter was scary now. We both started having neuropathy and fingers and toes (I'm not sure about her toes) were numbing which caused for dropping a great deal of things and the tingling, razor like senstion on the tips of the fingers. The "chemo brain/fog" kicked in when one day I went in for the infusion and as they asked for each side effect, I said to the doctor "I know it sounds crazy but I feel like I'm losing my mind!". Even now, a year after my last chemo, if I start to multi task (which I could really kick a** at in the past) it seriously feels as if my brain is starting to scramble and then I get anxious and worried that this will never go away or improve even. I would and still forget everything said to me an hour earlier and if you ask me to remember anything, you better send me a email, voice mail and call me! So, we compared notes often and we pushed each other forward. I would tell her to "Cowgirl up" for the next one as I lied to her because inside I didn't know if I could make it to the next one myself. I would test the waters with Micah, hoping she'd tell me that it would be okay if I had to stop but she didn't. Therefore, I had to keep going. I'd test the waters again after the next round but again, she wouldn't let me give up.
During this time, Micah told me that she felt she needed a word to give her strength and she chose the word "Peace". I thought that was a clever idea so I searched and searched in my mind, this word, that word...nothing felt right or fit. As i was recoverying from my fusion and before my diagnosis I adopted a dog from the Humane Society in Colorado Springs (please save a life and adopt). The little terrier mutt was scraggly but as I sat on the floor she came in the room and walked right into my lap. Then she walked into the volunteers lap and I can't say she was like "Oh my God, she's adorable, I MUST have her". She was quite thin (as most are there I suppose) with kennel cough but I was pleased. I called her Pippa (NO, not after the Middleton sister. I'd been collecting future dogs names). I would walk Pippa every day around 10 and if I didn't get off my butt she'd sit with her face infront of my laptop and justttt stareeeee. You can't sit there long with a dog staring you down 10" away so we'd walk. During the worst of my chemo, my 20 hour sleep days she didn't budge, she slept beside me. Pippa sat on my lap every waking moment. I took her everywhere and no matter where that was, she was loved...really, really loved. My friends would say that she was almost human. As we'd speak, she'd look at me, to the other person. Eye contact the whole time. At the dog park they call her the "Pink Streak", not so much for the cute pink snow suit but because she was like greyhound fast for a tiny girl. This dog was the love of my life. So, (I digress) Pippa sat in her usual spot on the console of my Jeep and I looked down at her and said out loud "You're such a joy to me"...My word was born..."JOY".
I decided to have a special gift made for Micah and finding out that she was very creative and an artist, a friend made a stained glass frame with "Peace" in different colors. It was unique and perfect for someone unique like Micah. I didn't tell her but asked for her address and within a few days, I receive a beautiful print with something she made for me! My word "JOY" with a little, brown dog with a crooked ear sitting on the "O"...there was Pippa. It's the most special thing I own.
In the end, we made it out and into remission together but for MIcah, it was short lived.
During this time I decided that 20 years in the mountain has been wonderful but I needed a change, change is good and so are different experiences, friends, foods, states! I left Colorado and loved every minute of driving that big RV myself (I don't think the drivers behind me shared in my enthusiasm though). Whatever, it felt good.
I moved to Houston, one extreme to the other and thought I would learn to adjust to the difference but in fact, I love it and that surprised me! Micahs cancer returned and had spread. She told me that she'd be coming to Houston for tests and you know, I wasn't getting it! You don't leave your doctor to come all the way to MD Anderson unless it's gotten pretty serious but she was so nonchallant about it, so calm and casual that I under estimated the seriousness of it all. I asked about the tests and told her I want to hear right away the results but she didn't really share much as if it wasn't a big deal. What had me pull my head out of the sand was an email from her friend and the word "hospice". HOSPICE? What are they talking about hospice??? This was the first day I cried about "our" cancer. This wasn't what I had planned for my online buddy. At 50, I have a great Dad, a brother and 3 great dogs and I would give them all up without hesitation so she could be with her husband David, her adorable daughter Claire and her son Ford. This just didn't (and still doesn't) make sense to me. She was dying at 45 and I'm kicking myself not "getting it" as I'm posting pictures of me in the pool with my dogs and "life is good" comments and she's quietly, gracefully "liking" my comments. I cry...I just...cry.
I tell you all this above for one reason, to lay out the ground work for how I met this stranger. Micah was a stranger to me and I didn't really know her because she didn't share what she was really all about. I found that out so much later from her friends and now, I see what an amazing woman she was. She was the epity of grace, love as it's meant to be in that it was genuine and with no strings. She was helpful to so many strangers who then became her friends. She appears to really have been a character and a 'goof" as one friend called her. She sang in her church choir and had this incredible voice. As you can see from her sitting in that red chair, absolutely STUNNING looking. Gorgeous naturally where I have stock in Revlon! Micah was humble and didn't talk about her art much but I have come to find out that she was gifted. Some really neat, colorful, fun, intriguing and greatly interesting pieces she's made. So multi-talented in owing her own hair salon and being a stylist, her singing, craft nights, love of giving and helping to anyone that asked. Without reservation, I feel she was one of those rarities that doesn't question should she help this person but felt that person had been sent and she would help without doubting or questioning. I look back now and realize there are no coincidences with us meeting. I would never have met her had I not moved to Houston, she could have contacted any other person on any of those forums and we both had been on many.
I arrived in Arkansas after a 8 hour drive up from Houston and I only came because I needed to attend the prayer meeting they were having at a local church for her. I went knowing the odds of seeing her were slim and that would be okay. I wanted to be in the presence of God and of others that had a connection and strong love of her. Prayer is powerful. There were so many friends and family that deserved to see her before her passing and I really was coming to know her the most....now. Her friends in this community of Searcy, Arkansas are nothing short of amazing. I was given the code to one of her friends home (I'm sure they've since changed it since I threatened to throw their clothes on the drive and take over their home and dog!) My father and I stayed for 2 nights and her dear friend Shane helped me get oriented and picked me up to go meet her. I was really blessed that she wanted to see me, really blessed. This incredible group of women friends who I really felt a sense shrouded her in love and safety. How blessed was she to have that and how blessed were they to have her. We all have good groups of friends but there was something different about these women. These are women that love to great depth for their other girlfriends.
They had moved Micahs hospital bed into her home and I walked in the house and her equally pretty Mom Pam met me, hugged me and I met her brother, husband David and sister in law who loves her as the sisters they really were in spirit. The house smelled of something delicious and as we were coming in, someone was leaving. This little town of Searcy was a very busy corner of the world and all for the love of Micah. I walked in the room and told her to get her butt out of bed because she had a marathon to run! She had lost a lot of weight but still gloriously beautiful. Alert with her beautiful smile that was like a beacon to everyone. I've never walked out of a room, knowing this would be the last time I saw someone. It didn't seem possible that someone so alert, relatively chatty and sitting up smiling could be gone within a matter of a few weeks. The one thing I will never forget about Micah, which I think epitomizes who she was to so many. When I first walked in the room to see her for the last time, she looked at me with the most grateful look in her eyes and she said "I'm honored that you came to see me". SHE was honored to see ME! She had such little time left and yet she was the one that felt honored?!! She was humble, grateful and very special to so many.
I decided that the funeral be best left to very close friends and family. I found out later that all her art work was displayed the night before at visitation, it must have been really wonderful. People can still buy her art work on zazzle.com micah holden and I felt frustrated that I wasn't able to let her beautiful JOY print be shown to the world. I felt as if I needed to contribute somehow to her families medical expenses and other things that cost money at a time like this. I decided that maybe I can have coffee mugs and prints made up and sell them so that all proceeds over and above the cost to have them made go right to the family so I'm in the process of doing that now. I'm afraid however, it will be nice to get donations from the heart but the amount won't be the kind of check I'd like to send to David and his family. I was hoping for something much grander, something as grand as she was and is to so many people.. Then walks in my friend Denny Stever who told me about gofundme. So... this is my story about my online friend Micah. My words certainly don't do her, her friends and family much justice. This world has lost an angel and heaven has had one return to bless others who need it.
I'm requesting anyone so generous of heart to donate anything they can so I can give Micahs lovely family a respite even a few moments of worry about funds and payments and bills. If anyone would like a print of my "JOY", I'd be more than happy to send it to the ends of the earth so just let me know. Again, please help and donate to her family. Sincerely, Tricia
Organizer
Tricia Heraty
Organizer
Spring, TX
