All my life I have been surrounded by loved ones with fatal and sometimes incurable diseases. The first person I knew to pass away from a disease was a three-year-old girl named Amy, who died of leukemia. My mother just finished chemotherapy for B-cell Lymphoma. She was diagnosed just after her retirement from the Veterans Hospital where she worked tirelessly for thirty-plus years for men who served in the US Military. My sister’s life was permanently altered while she was in her twenties. She was diagnosed with a large brain tumor. It took two major operations, over the course of seven years and two years of heavy medicine. She was in a support group for those with brain cancer. Of the twenty-plus close friends she made in that group, my sister is the lone survivor. A childhood mentor of mine, Mike, passed away last year as a result of diabetes.