It's official. The sky is falling...and all over the place. My friend and collaeague has one sister who just got out of the hospital after a likely bout with MRSA only for a second sister to have found a lump on her chest wall eight years after a bilateral mastectomy. Another colleague came to work after the winter break tired from keeping watch over her sister-in-law who lies in a coma after a number of brain bleeds and strokes with everyone hoping for a miracle. A friend who recently lost her mother now faces losing her brother who lives many miles away. Jesus.

The woman who had the bilateral mastectomy, though I never met her has been my hero for the last month since I was getting ritual morning stories from her sister and my friend and colleague about her heroic battle with cancer which did not include any chemo or any treatments beyond the mastectomy. I have listened with awe and hope about her coffee enemas, juicing, ozonating her water etc. I am scared for her. I am scared for me.

Have you ever had some sort of exceptional day - the day of a funeral of someone you loved, a day you heard terrible news about someone that directly impacted you, your wedding day perhaps, or any number of really important days or days when you were trying to get your head around something outside your normal realm of experience....and you had this simultaneous understanding that no one else knew, could know what you and others around you were experiencing? A sureal and lonely moment on the planet earth. I remember the first time I understood that I was 99% of the time oblivious to the suffering and the celebrations of others. I felt bad and also relieved. Now it just feels constant - this feeling of exceptional ...something. Not all good, not all bad. It seems there are a lot of us at any given moment going through these exceptional times...all unaware of the others...