wow

 

 

I received a message on facebook today from an old boyfriend ( as I seem to get often enough, but it is facebook)

We meet in Mount Cook when I was a wee apprentice, I was 23, and he was 30. 
His nickname was Diesel.  Lol, I had a monster crush on him but was way to shy to talk to him. 
He was cool and illusive, he kept to himself and never went to the tavern, which is where allllll the staff went every night, I remember being in the coolroom getting mushrooms one afternoon, and he came in, and he said Hi, and I completely turned into the biggest goofball on earth and said something totally stupid about mushrroms, and feeling like a complete tool, he gave me a blank look and walked out, and a girlfriend of mine come in, going…. "OMG OMG he was in the coolroom with you, what happened…"? and I started crying…. lol.
Anyway, months later after getting sooo much hassle from my friends, and his friends, we both knew that we liked eachother, and on the very day that he was going to Christchurch for 3 months to do Tech (Tafe to you Aussies), he asked for my phone number.
We actually ended up together for about 2 years. We moved to Christchurch together, and there…he started a drug habit, In the end, I gave him an ultimatim, which he couldn’t keep, and we split up.
I think we saw eachother once…. but after that we went seperate ways.
Fast forward 13 years… and he sends me a message. 

He had a form of cancer last year, he said there were a couple of things on google about him, if i wanted to read them, so tonight I searched and came up with alot about him…

""Troy and Andrea Hardy want this to be a survival story.

Mr Hardy is in isolation at the South Island Bone Marrow Transplant Unit in Christchurch with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia awaiting a groundbreaking double umbilical cord blood transfusion, his only hope for survival.

The chef and web designer has everything to live for, a loving wife, and two beautiful daughters, one just a year old.

"I feel positive about the future, it all comes down to not getting an infection."

This time last year he had no idea what was coming. He was working as a chef at the South Canterbury Club and enjoying being a new dad to baby Rose.

At the start of this year he started getting boils that would not heal. After a number of tests in May he received a phonecall from Timaru Hospital that changed his life. The 41-year-old had leukemia and a rare form which was normally diagnosed in elderly people and carried a high fatality rate. "I know this event will change my life. It was a complete shock to the system but I am feeling really positive. I know I will get through it."

His health insurance Sovereign has paid out for a terminal illness but he is in The South Island Bone Marrow Transplant Unit recovering from a round of chemotherapy in October.

He has just had a bone marrow aspiration from his hip bone to see what the chemotherapy has achieved. His redemption, he believes, will come in the form of umbilical cord blood which will be flown over from Europe by the bone marrow coordinator and transfused into his system, scheduled for January. The infusion replenishes his body with healthy white blood cells. With a high content of stem cells they will replicate quickly.

"The biggest risk is getting an infection because your body can’t fight it. They have used this treatment around the world and in New Zealand they did do a double cord transplant on an Indian girl who was about 18 … and she has survived."

Having gone from knowing nothing about leukemia to being in the position of not finding a bone marrow match, the Hardys want to raise awareness about the disease and the importance of joining the bone marrow registrar run by the New Zealand Blood service. "Troy is given platelets some days from donated blood," Mrs Hardy said. "Even if this article made only a couple of people donate blood or join the bone marrow register, that would be great.""

His wife and him have split up, he only mentioned the one child to me, so I gather the other one might be his ex-wifes with another man…
But wow….what a life changing thing to have happened.  Its so weird to know someone, like you do, from almost from another life time and to hear that something like this has happened..

I can picture this perfect clear night in Mt Cook, Troy and I had just left the tavern, its one of our last nights, and we are standing in the middle of a patch of clearing, its a full moon and a perfect cloudless night, and the mountains all around are covered in snow and you can see it all clear as day.  
He was in front of me, telling me how much he loved me.
 
This happened over 13 years ago, and its as fresh in my mind as the day it happened.

Some of life is just a blur.
Days turn into weeks and weeks into years, and yet there are some moments in your life where you can almost be right back there in that moment. 
I don’t have many of those moments.  But that is one of them.

In 2004, I was in massive car accident.  Killing my best friend James, who I cradled in my arms while he slipped away.  That moment changed my life, but it seems since then I have been running from things that I can’t control.
Hearing from Troy and hearing what his past year has been like has stirred up all these things in my head.

kip