Let’s get ready to rumble!

In less than 48 hours, Round 2 begins.

As I write those words, all I can think about is sitting on my Dad’s lap watching boxing matches, back in the day.  Where boxers like Sonny Liston, Floyd Patterson, Joe Frazier and Cassius Clay (aka Mohammed Ali) went into a ring and pretty much just beat the crap out of each other.

Well, Arielle Amici is no Cassius Clay.  She’s not even a young Sugar Ray Leonard (what they call a Featherweight!) To me, she’s just a kid who should not have to be getting into this ring.  …but I’ll bet I’m not the first mother, of a child who has cancer, to think that thought!

Boxers fight for money, prestige, power, and ego….  Cancer patients fight for their lives.

On Monday morning Arielle will step back in the ring, mentally ready and all pumped up for Round 2; five consecutive days of chemotherapy. She’ll battle with being scared and away from home; feeling sick and miserable; strangers who come by every few hours to take her blood her or push some mystery chemical into her veins; the oddness of being weighted before and after the chemo treatment; and the many people, who will ask her on a daily basis; Do you have pain? How do you feel today? Are you experiencing any unusual symptoms?

There will be no ring, no bell, no pretty girl holding a sign that says “Round 2,” just her family, her friends, and YOU cheering her on. Thank you!

And as Michael Buffer would say, “Let’s get ready to rumble!”

My money’s on Amici!