"Life Is 10% What You Make It And 90% How You Take It"

[Anonymous]

     When we met in October of 1975, I got to know what Dennis was dealing with in the back of his mind and how his diagnosis affected him. He was desperately in need of a change when we met. As was I. He was depressed, underweight and over medicated. I was a bartender who had a major problem with the legal drug alcohol, illegal cocaine and shopping. Trying to fill the void in my life. A bad good girl, I dated a few men for money and was bored with my life. I had lots of material things but no passion left. We were two people who were at the end of their rope essentially.Two strangers in the night.

        As a child I grew up fast in a family that was dealing with serious illnesses. Paramedics knew us. Our family walked the fence of death on a regular basis. It wasn't uncommon to be called in the middle of the night or out of class to hurry and go to the Intensive Care Unit at Memorial Hospital of Long Beach because of my dad's bad heart and ill health in general. He had many heart attacks, cardiac arrests and the Last Rights along with strokes leaving him partially paralyzed. He managed to survive against all the odds, so when Dennis told me about his "death sentence" this didn't scare me one bit.