On Feb. 18, 2009, my daddy was diagosed with terminal cancer. He was a great man & loved the LORD!!! He wouldn’t go to the doctor until after his granddaughters’ wedding (Jan 2009).  After he came home, he started seeing his doctor. They ran several tests then on Feb. 18th our family received the devastating news.  There was nothing that they could do, radiaton may give him a few more weeks, but only God knew the answer to that. We prayed to that end & of course we prayed that if it was God’s will that he would heal daddy from this terrible disease. My daddy decided to take radiation, he had 8 treatments, but during this time, as he was getting weaker & weaker, he fell & broke his arm. While daddy couldn’t take his last 2 treatment cause he was in the hospital, he was also loosing blood. He received 5 pints of blood while in the hospital. I was a blood donor while my girls were growing up so I knew I had to give back. On March 25th, 2009, my sister & I picked my daughter up from the Atlanta airport so she could see her papaw before he passed away & on our way to our hometown, we stopped in Cleveland, TN (about 15 minutes from my parents house) to donate 3 pints of blood in honor of our daddy. Little did we know, that as soon as we gave our blood to hopefully give someone else life, as we got in our car to drive back to Athens, we received a call that our precious daddy had passed away. Our mom told him we were donating blood in honor of him so he knew we were doing something for him & hopefully to help others.

I encourage everyone that can, please donate blood. There’s a huge need for it…because if someone else hadn’t given at one point, my daddy wouldn’t have had the 5 pints that he needed. Our thanks goes out to that person who had a heart of giving to help my precious daddy. Yes, we miss my daddy terribly, but we have the sense to know & understand that he’s with our LORD AND SAVIOUR and one day we will see him again & spend eternity with him…. I love you daddy!!

Sally Curtis Chandler