Just wanted to let all of you know that Sandi is still holding on. But from what I hear, it won't be much longer.

I'd just like to say a few things about Sandi.

Sandi has been my dear friend for over four years. I am sick at heart over what she has gone through and is now going through. Granted, dying is something that all of us will eventually go through, I didn't want it to be this way for Sandi. Personally, I'll share that I'm no stranger to witnessing terminal illness. I've been through the process with family members and friends in the past. But to be honest, Sandi's experience has been a horrifying scene to witness. I think the injustice of her story is possibly the most difficult truth to digest.

As I think of my friend now preparing to leave this world that we know and embrace eternity, I will not forget the wonderful caring, gentle spirit that is Sandi.

We've exchanged seemingly hundreds of emails, scores and scores of telephone calls and made daring plans for superlative trips and excursions for us "sickies." During those voluminous emails and long telephone chats, we solved the world's health problems, and bettered the medical profession, and outlawed mercury and shoddy care for people around the world. We even got a little daring in our fantasies and concocted quite sophisticated plots to make the world a better place. I laugh and smile when I think of our ideas. But they were ideas whose beginnings were borne out of years of chronic illness, disappointment and desperation on both of our parts.

My heart is heavy and my mind is really too stunned to say all that I want to say about my friend. So I will borrow the words of John Donne. I'm sure Sandi won't mind:

"All mankind is one author and is one volume;
When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book,
but translated into a better language;
And every chapter must be so translated;
God employs several translators;
Some pieces are translated by age,
some by sickness,
some by war,
some by injustice;
but God's hand is in every translation,
And his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another."


Oh! how Sandi will delight the Angels.

I love you, Sandi.