Peter A Taylor: the single most motivational person to have touched my life.  A mentor.   A coach.  A fellow equestrian.  A good friend.  A catalyst for change.  A fighter and an inspiration.  A modern day miracle who defies death.  I am always surprised by how little he is, because believe me, if anyone is ‘larger than life’, it is Pete.

Nobody knows why this man is still alive. Doctors and scientists can’t explain it. By all rites, he should have been dead for fifteen years or so, give or take.  For the past sixteen years, he has done a bimonthly dance between two fates: death at the hands of the leichmanaisis parasites that feed on his bone marrow, or death by the only treatment that keeps these pesky critters at bay; a week long drip of deadly chemotherapy drugs.  Peter Taylor chooses life.

Nine hundred (900!) doses.  Nine hundred times, he has watched them pour deadly chemicals into his body in an attempt to prolong his life.  An attempt, quite frankly that this doctors didn’t expect to work for so long; it was one of those desperate treatment options they offer the dying to make everyone feel like they are trying.

The very treatment purported to have saved him from death by leichmanaisis, has caused him to go deaf and blind.  And yet, through the quagmire of mud that he wades through, he continues to see beauty all around him, he refuses to succumb to self pity, he leads a fuller life and contributes more to the lives and well being of others than any other person I know.

In a response to Peter’s latest blog, his sister Yvonne wrote,  ‘Pete, having seen you go through the grinding toil of treatment – I can only reiterate to your readers that you can endure the most humiliating and soul destroying experience and still talk about sunflowers and the sun dancing on your closed eyelids. This is what makes you the champion that you are and my most loved brother and hero.’

Those sixteen years of bimonthly treatments have taken their toll.  He hasn’t given up, but he has made a drastic and desperate choice in order to live well or not at all.  Having done his research, Peter has chosen (and insisted that he be given) a chemotherapy treatment that should once and for all, kill those life-sucking parasites.  No lab rat, no other human being has paved the way.  Peter Taylor is the one, the only, and the first.

His strength has been sorely tested over the years.  Currently, my friend and mentor is being pushed to his limits and yet he still finds the reserves for some of the most eloquent pieces of writing to have touched my life.  Reading his Blog will change your perspective on life.

If Peter can write so evocatively when being tested to his utter limits, then I look forward to the day when finally, on the other side of this dreadful thing, he writes about a germinating seed of hope in that garden he so lovingly tends. He so beautifully harnesses the power of words that I can imagine them now, virtually dancing off of the page!  I will read his posts and cry with tears of shared joy and optimism.  Imagine!  A future of unbroken good health!  You can do it Peter! And I am telling the world!

… which leads me to ‘ The Whisper Campaign’!!