[Reposted with the permission of the very talented business/marketing writer Marianne Worley, consultant at The Essay Expert. This poignant story was originally posted on her blog, Marketing Matters and Other Stories. I didn't even have to think before asking her if I could post it to The Essay Expert's blog on Memorial Day.]

The day was Monday, April 21, 2008. My phone rang just after 9pm. I checked the caller ID–it was my brother Nolan. Instinctively, I knew something was wrong, very wrong.

My Dad had been in an accident and was being taken to a hospital about 20 miles north of my house. We didn’t know anything more. I quickly got dressed, jumped in my car, and hit the gas pedal. About 5 minutes later, my brother called again. Now Dad was being transported by helicopter to the much larger hospital just a few miles from my house. I got off the freeway and drove back the other way.

My brother, sister-in-law, and I arrived at the hospital around the same time. The helicopter was still in flight, so we staked out seats in the busy emergency room to wait, still perplexed about what had happened to our Dad.

After my stepmom and sister rushed in, we learned the whole story. My Dad usually came home from work around 5 or 6, so when it started to get dark and he still wasn’t home, my stepmom picked up the phone to make some increasingly frantic calls.

My Dad was notorious for sporadically answering cell calls. As a contractor, he was constantly breaking and losing mobile phones. She wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer, so she dialed his friends and clients. He had left the job site hours earlier, but no one knew where he was.

My stepmom and sister decided to drive to the job site to look for him. They found his empty work truck on the side of the road with the driver’s side door open. They called 911 and nearby friends who could help with the search. There was a small creek parallel to the road with a steep bank covered in thick, muddy vegetation. My athletic sister charged down the hill and found him lying unconscious in the creek, pale and covered with dirt.

The paramedics pulled him up on a rescue stretcher and loaded him into the helicopter. This process doesn’t take a few minutes, like it does on TV and in the movies. The rescue actually took more than an hour.

The helicopter finally arrived, but still we knew nothing about his condition. We assumed it was a stroke, or something similar. When they finally let us in to see him, we discovered that he had suffered some sort of episode, possibly a seizure, and was experiencing pronounced weakness on one side of his body. It looked like a stroke, but he was stable. So they admitted him and scheduled an MRI for the next morning.

The following day, the doctors confirmed that the MRI results showed that it looked like a stroke. We felt relieved. We knew a brain tumor would be a much more deadly diagnosis. But they still wanted to get a new MRI, with contrast, the next day to be sure.

On Wednesday, April 23, 2008, our lives changed forever. The new MRI showed that it wasn’t a stroke–it was a brain tumor. They called in a neurosurgeon for a consultation. My education in neurology commenced that day. I carried a notebook at all times. I scribbled down details from the doctors during the day and did online research at night.

Over the next 7 months, my Dad had a biopsy and was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressive form of brain cancer. Our doctor decided to treat with radiation and chemotherapy, not surgery. I knew that without surgery, the 6-month survival rate was almost zero. When I pressed him, he said he could do the surgery if we got a second opinion from one of the neurosurgeons he recommended.

After many phone calls, I got an appointment with one of the top experts in the country at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. The neurosurgeon just needed to see my Dad’s (now enormous) medical file, along with all of his MRI results. We got his opinion, and my Dad had surgery to remove the tumor. Although the surgery was successful, he still needed radiation and chemo to stave off regrowth, which is incredibly common.

I researched clinical trials and spoke to doctors at UCLA and UC San Francisco. My Dad didn’t qualify for any trials and his prognosis was grave. By September, the tumor was back, bigger than before. We tried some experimental chemo drugs, but nothing helped. My Dad wasted away before our eyes, until we finally called in hospice care in November.

On December 3rd, the hospice nurse told us that the end was near, so we gathered together to say goodbye. We stayed up pretty late, but finally succumbed to our own fatigue and reluctantly went to bed.

Just before 4:30am, I awoke suddenly and sat bolt upright. I went downstairs and the nurse told me she had just checked on my Dad–he was still hanging in there. When I went to his bedside, I touched his hands and face. I didn’t think he was breathing, so I woke up my stepmom, who had decided to take a quick nap just minutes before.

He was gone. We all gathered around his bed and cried again.

A week or so later, my sister Whitney and I, always the Daddy’s-Little-Girl types, decided to get tattoos to celebrate our Dad’s life. She got an elegant “W” and I got an infinity sign with a “W” in the middle. Worley forever.

My Dad was never called to battle in Vietnam, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t fight a war. So on this Memorial Day, I remember all who have fallen in war, including the continuing war on cancer.
____________________

I haven’t met anyone who hasn’t been touched in some way by cancer. The next time you’re thinking about making a cash donation to a charity, please consider one of the organizations in the fight against cancer, including the American Brain Tumor Association.

Thanks for reading this very personal story. I’m sharing it because it shaped who I am today. Many thanks to my fellow blogger The JackB–his post from yesterday inspired me to write this.

I haven’t met anyone who hasn’t been touched in some way by cancer. The next time you’re thinking about making a cash donation to a charity, please consider one of the organizations in the fight against cancer, including the American Brain Tumor Association.

I just got word that LinkedIn is offering a free trial of its Job Seeker Premium service.  Here’s a short article I wrote about that service.  Job Seekers:  Have you heard about LinkedIn’s Job Seeker Premium?

I encourage you to take advantage of this offer and explore the benefits of the service.  Offer expires March 29, so act fast!

I do not get any payment for referring people to this service.  I just think it’s a great opportunity to get organized and increase contact with recruiters.

Remember to mark your calendar so that if you do not want to continue the service you cancel before your month is up!

And please report in the comments any experiences, positive or negative, you’ve had with Job Seeker Premium.

FREE TRIAL OFFER

In January I reported on The Essay Expert’s New Year’s Resolutions (Ressaylutions). As human beings, we are not designed to keep our promises. I certainly am an expert at making resolutions and then forgetting about them, without ever acknowledging which promises I have – and haven’t – kept. Not this year! I’m taking a look to see how I’m doing, ten weeks after my resolutions were made. Ready?

The Essay Expert’s New Year’s Ressaylutions were:

1. Convert my website to WordPress.

This project is complete – sort of. My site is indeed operating now on a WordPress platform, and theoretically I have easy access to edit my pages in any way I want. I have run into some technical difficulties however. For instance, when I tried to edit a page, it made all kinds of changes I didn’t want it to make and “broke”the page. I received the following email today from the company that handled the conversion:

“The problem of visually editing your page content, without causing the page to break, lies with the page template. I did indicate that the template is dated, with a lot of additional graphics embedded. If you ever switch to a more modern template that contains a whole lot less graphics internally you will be able to edit your content visually. The internal design of most of your pages work perfectly for static HTML type pages, but will require someone who is an HTML coder to add content to them. If the website owner wishes to do this, the editing will require some extra effort when editing anything visually.”

Enough said. I’ve got my work cut out for me.

As some of you know, my blog link also changed and created a hiccup in my blog postings last week. You might also notice that if you do a search in my blog, you get not only blog postings but all relevant parts of my website in the search results.

This issue will be fixed later this week – when I will once again need to change my blog link due to a major “architecture change.” My apologies in advance for any strange blog digests you might receive next week as a result of this additional change!

(P.S. I am thankful as I kvetch about my technical difficulties that I am safely landlocked in the Midwest, without any fears for my safety. My heart goes out to the victims of the tsunami in Japan who have much bigger things to worry about.)

2. Make it easier for my readers to choose the topic they want to read about (create 4 separate e-lists: a) Job Search (Resumes & Cover Letters); b) College Admissions; c) LinkedIn & Professional Writing; and d) Everything). AND
3. Create autoresponders. (Related to ressaylution #2.)

This project is running close to schedule thanks to my incredible intern, Robin Reinke! She has prepared all the autoresponders and we’re continuing to move forward to create the lists. Stay tuned!

4. Guest blog.

I haven’t written any specifically targeted guest blogs, though some of my existing articles have been published other places. I did deliver my webinar, How to Write a Killer LinkedIn Profile, for a group of Columbia University alumni and students, as well as for a group of people through ilostmyjob.com. Both events were a hit! I will also be on a blog radio show on March 22, Back in Force Productions, geared toward stay-at-home parents relaunching their careers.

5. Start an Artist’s Way group.

I’ve been writing my morning pages every day (three pages a day of journaling), and though I’ve missed some mornings, I haven’t missed a single day. I haven’t been as good about creating Artist’s dates, which are dates with myself to do something fun and artistic. Mostly what has happened is that my priorities have changed since January. I’m surprising myself by finding creative expression through writing resumes and LinkedIn profiles! I am also singing in a newly forming funk/R&B band! I’ll post clips when I have them!

6. Continue to write and share about writing issues, job search issues, and sometimes life issues that strike my fancy each week and that my readers care about.

Yep I’ve been doing that. Covered topics from early admissions to parallel construction to LinkedIn news to greeting card grammar. Even got political. And now I’m getting honest.
How are your New Year’s resolutions coming along? It’s a great exercise to check in and acknowledge where you’re making progress, where you’re stuck, where things have shifted. What do you see when you take a look at how the year is going?

Thank you to all who took advantage of The Essay Expert’s $25 holiday gift certificate.

Just yesterday one of my past clients, who obtained his dream job, gave his sister a resume as a belated Christmas present.

There’s still time to give yourself or a loved one the gift of a resume, LinkedIn profile update, or other writing help with a $25 gift certificate from The Essay Expert.  This offer officially expires today, January 8, 2011.  For my blog subscribers ONLY, I am extending the offer to January 11, 2011 (1/11/11 — an auspicious date!)

Now is the time to contact The Essay Expert!

May your New Year be fulfilling and prosperous.  I look forward to hearing from you.

On September 16, 2010, the US News and World Report published a list of the Top 10 Best Places to Launch a Second Career.  I was thrilled to see Madison on the list, as it has been my experience that this city is indeed a great place to start over.

I came to Madison in October 2008 knowing one person and having only a part time job (law school admissions consultant for Kaplan Test Prep & Admissions) to keep me afloat.  I obtained some additional part time jobs along the way, and two years later, I have what is starting to be a thriving business.  I have met an incredible community of business owners here at regular and diverse networking events.  I have made friends both through social circles and business circles.  I even worked part time for over a year at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where I got a job in the midst of a hiring freeze.

Plus this city is beautiful.  Where else could I walk down the street for any of the following:  a swim in the lake, a yoga class, a Thai dinner, a household item from the hardware store, and fresh local produce from the food coop or farmer’s market?

I agree wholeheartedly that Madison Wisconsin is a great place to launch a career.  I can see why people don’t want to leave — I plan to stay put for a long time!

I am a legal career advisor, after all…  so I wrote a series of resume tips geared specifically to attorneys and people in the legal professions.  Two of them were recently published on mylegal.com and they are formatting tips for your legal resume.  Go to Six Great Resume Formatting Tips Part One and Part Two

It has never been your job skills that get you a job. See how the cavemen did it in this humorous video from BBC One. The Origin of Job Interviews: The Armstrong and Miller Show

Thanks to Jill Sarah Moscowitz of NonProfit Career Advisor for bringing this article to my attention. The holidays can be the perfect time to concentrate on your job search! Find out why: Don’t Stop Looking During the Holidays – from the New York Times.

Whether it’s the holidays or you just have a lot of free time on your hands, downtime does not have to beat you down. How to Turn Downtime into Job Offers – from the New York Times

The Essay Expert wishes you a wonderful, magical, and grammatically correct holiday season!

Best wishes for your success in the upcoming year.

Sincerely yours,

Brenda Bernstein & The Essay Expert