A “club” of sorts

Posted by Sammy on Jul 15th, 2010 | no comments

The other night I sat down for the 2 hour episode of Deadliest Catch. I had been looking forward to this episode since early this year because one of the main characters, Phil Harris, passed away about a month after Gary passed away. It kinda hit home only because Gary and I religiously watched Deadliest Catch. I’d probably even go as far as saying that of all of the folks on the show Phil was our favorite. Tuesday’s episode was going to be “the” episode where he actually dies. Crazy that there were camera’s around for that. I had my tissues handy because I wasn’t quite sure how I’d react. I KNEW it would be sad, just wasn’t sure how sad it would be for me.

As I was watching it they’d do their normal boat clips and then they’d show clips of Phil in the hospital. One part with Phil really hit home. It was when he was talking and basically starts apologizing for stuff. That reminded me SOOOOOOO much of the last time Gary talked to me. I remember that day like it was just yesterday. Some of the things that he said just are things I could never forget. I remember him having full on conversations with Dr. P (his oncologist) even though Dr. P was not even in his hospital. I remember him apologizing to me for just everything. Ever since he got sick Gary felt like he was a burden to me, and that couldn’t have been further from the truth. He knew that if the roles were reverse he would have done the same thing for me, granted he’d quickly point out that he wouldn’t have done as great as a job as I had done. It’s that apology that Phil did that really hit home to me. It’s almost like when you are dying you kinda know its coming without really KNOWING its coming and you start making peace.

The other part of the show that really hit me and is really why I named this post the way I did was the moment when Josh got “THE” call from the hospital. At least he was awake when he got the call. But man that’s a moment he’ll never be able to forget because the moment I got the call about Gary is a moment I’ll never be able to forget. I could relive it and tell it in so much detail its crazy. There are things that I’d LOVE nothing more than to forget and me getting that call is probably one of them. That rush of adrenaline that I got was absolutely insane and quite frankly, I hope I never have to have another rush like that one. Anyone that has ever gotten a call like that knows that its something that lives with you forever. It’s not something you can ever forget.

Dreams of daddy

Posted by Sammy on Jun 21st, 2010 | one comment

I don’t know how we got on the topic of daddy while on our way to the gym today but from the backseat of my car I start hearing Mikey talking about daddy. Specifically how he wants to find him. Ouch, talk for a stab in the heart!!!!

For the past 5.5 months I’ve been telling him that his daddy is in heaven with the moon and the stars and he’ll forever be in his heart. Mikey apparently is a smart little boy and realizes that its possible to go up to the moon and stars if you had a rocket ship. So he insisted on going in a rocket ship to go to daddy so that he could play with him. Because he REALLY wanted to play with his daddy. So to try to calm his whining I decided to ask him if he played with daddy in his dreams and he of course said yes. I doubt Mikey knows what dreams are, but its was comforting to think that he was playing with Gary in his dreams. I then proceeded to ask him what he did with daddy. Go figure, he remembers playing guitar hero with Gary so that was one of the first things he mentioned. He said that he played guitar and also the drums. He also mentioned playing with the bouncy ball. So I asked if he played soccer and basketball with him and he enthusiastically said yes.

I can only hope that this little boy *is* having dreams of his daddy. I’m doing my best to try to preserve whatever memories he could have of his daddy. It won’t be easy since he’s so young and the odds are against me from the get go, but I can only hope that our angel upstairs is doing his hardest to help me out in that department.

Walk with us!

Posted by Sammy on Jun 15th, 2010 | no comments

We are less than 5 months away from this year’s Light the Night walk. This year is the second year that Team Gary’s Guardian Angel’s will be walking. Unfortunately this year we are walking in memory of Gary and Mikey and I will be carrying the lit up gold balloon that symbolizes those that we lost leukemia and lymphoma. There are a few things that makes this year’s walk THAT much more special in my book.

#1 -Gary is one of this year’s Honored Heroes. What an honor for our family, he’d never expect something like that in a million years.

#2 – At last year’s walk one of Gary’s coworkers, Gretchen, who raised over $1k in a matter of a week got a medal for having raised so much money. Well I happened to be standing right next to Gary with the camera turned on just as she was giving her medal to him because he was such an inspiration to her. That night I told Gary that next year (now this year) I will be up on stage getting my medal too because I will raise over $1k just myself. I WILL!!!!

So here I am soliciting people to walk with us at this year’s event. It’ll be on November 13th, at Huzienga Park in Ft. Lauderdale.

If you’d like to join our team you can by clicking HERE.

If you can’t join us for whatever reason but would like to help me get to my $1k goal you can do so by navigating to my personal page or by clicking HERE

Thank you! With your help we can get the money that researchers need to come up with a cure for blood cancers so that no other families have to be broken apart like mine has been.

Starting my book :)

Posted by Sammy on Jun 3rd, 2010 | one comment

Tonight I decided to sit here with my laptop doing the first step of my very own book idea. That is to go through Gary’s blog posts and take what I can for the book. I fully expected it to not be an easy venture. Not because its soooooo very hard to copy and paste text from a website into Microsoft Word. It’s totally because I’d find myself reading the actual posts. Going back a year and reading things from the beginning of the NIH-journey, and knowing how the story ends, well I don’t have to tell you that I need a tissue box near me.

I came across this paragraph in one of Gary’s posts that he wrote 11 days after his official diagnosis of Peripheral T-Cell Lymphoma, and immediately I found myself crying.

2. PAIN and GUILT:

So after the shock of it all began to wear off I began to feel a tremendous amount of both pain and guilt. Not for myself. I mean let’s be honest if I die, I’m not really going to suffer for it. No, I feel an unbelievable amount of both pain and guilt for my wife and son. My wife because if I don’t make it she will be left holding the pieces of a shatter life and will be forced to move on. I hate that idea. And for my son I feel a sense of devastation because as a child I did not have a father (since that cocksucker left when I was 2). I vowed that when I had kids I would never do that to them. Now, I may be forced into doing that and I hate myself for it. All around feeling of guilt.

So with that I’ll continue with my work for the night with my tissue box by my side.

My story on Sun-Sentinel!!!!

Posted by Sammy on May 8th, 2010 | one comment

Last Sunday as Mikey and I were sailing the seas on the beautiful Oasis of the Seas my story hit the Sun-Sentinel local newspaper. I never imagined my story being covered by a newspaper let alone the local one. Shoot just getting Gary’s obituary to read in the Florida State Times that comes out a few times a year has been more of a mission than this! So I’ve added my story below, here’s a link to the actual online article: My Story

Pembroke Pines woman uses her blog to tell of her experiences as a young widow, single mom

By Chris Guanche, Forum Publishing Group

May 1, 2010

Samantha Zullo’s blog isn’t like most others.

Every new entry she posts offers information about cancer, or chronicles her experiences being a widow and single mother at age 30. Blogging served as an outlet for her and husband Gary Zullo to help deal with the rare T-cell lymphoma he’d been diagnosed with.

“The blog was like therapy,” said Zullo, of Pembroke Pines. “Gary could write how he felt.”

Samantha Zullo said the diagnosis came as a shock — her husband was in his early 30s, exercised and ate right, yet he was afflicted with a form of lymphoma normally found in people twice his age. The diagnosis came two days before the birth of their son, Michael.

Gary Zullo received chemotherapy treatment for his condition. That meant flying to Maryland and both of them being away from Michael. After several treatments, he returned to work as a software engineer and was taking Michael to day care in the morning. It all changed last Christmas, when he began to act delusional and was taken to the hospital with pneumonia and kidney failure. He died Jan. 1.

“It’s completely unreal, like a really bad nightmare, and I’m still waiting for someone to wake me up,” she said.

But even after her husband’s death, Samantha Zullo kept blogging. She recalls the frustration of looking for information or people to relate to. She would use the blog to help people in similar situations.

“I can’t help my husband anymore, but I can help others,” she said. “I know he would want me to do things to help others.”

In addition to blogging, Zullo donates blood and helped with a fundraiser for Weston’s Relay for Life cancer awareness event. The fundraiser started with a simple idea: 2-year-old Michael and his classmates at the Creative Child Learning Center in Sunrise decorated flags to sell at a silent auction.

“We wanted to do something for the family,” said Sarah Braisted, the center’s director. “When there’s a loss like that, there’s not much you can do to make someone feel better.”

Children decorated the flags with handprints or drew fish and other animals on them. The flags were displayed at the Relay for Life’s opening ceremony on April 24.

Because the effort was organized at the last minute, Zullo said she was expecting to raise about $250. Between the auction and other donations, the effort netted about $1,500.

“A lot of people are struggling with the economy, so to see donations coming in like that is incredible,” Zullo said.

As for the blogging, Zullo doesn’t intend to quit anytime soon. She said comments from strangers who can identify with being widowed or experiencing cancer have been helpful. Gary Zullo’s blog remains online, and he’d intended to write a “witty book” about his experience with cancer. Samantha Zullo intends to write that book for him, using material from his blog.

“I want to take something that was very negative and put a positive spin to it,” Zullo said. “Even if no one else reads it, it’s for me.”

Never in million years

Posted by Sammy on Apr 15th, 2010 | 3 comments

Gosh I feel like those 4 words define my life right now. Ya know, start off every sentence with those 4 words and just add whatever you want to it, and that’s ME. Let’s see….

Never in a million years….

….would I have thought I’d be a widow at 30
….would I have thought I wouldn’t grow old with Gary
….would I have thought that I’d be forced to raise Mikey on my own
….would I have thought that I’d be an advocate for raising money for finding a cure to cancer

I seriously could go on and on. But that’s not the real purpose of this post. Today I had another one of my “Never in a million years” moments. As I stated in a previous post, Mikey’s daycare is raising money for my Relay for Life team. Well today when I got to work after dropping Mikey off I got a call from daycare. Apparently another mom wanted to join my Relay team and had some questions for me so they wanted to make sure I was ok with them giving out my number, which I was. Well they then stated that one of the news stations was coming out tomorrow morning to do a story on our fundraiser! How freaking cool is that.

NEVER in a million years would Gary or I have thought that Mikey’s daycare would be doing any kind of fundraiser like this for my Relay team. Let alone, we’d never ever think that a news station would even care about something like this. I mean there is a pretty good possibility that Gary’s name and story is going to get on the news. How awesome is that!?!?!?? HIS STORY!

I’m so excited to go to daycare tomorrow morning to see all of the wonderful banners decorated. I’m bringing my fancy shmancy camera to take pics so that I can post them here. I plan on finding out the details of when the news plans on airing our segment so that I can somehow get that on video so that I can post that on my blog too.

So yeah, never in a millions year, that’s the story of my life.

Proud of my Mikey

Posted by Sammy on Apr 8th, 2010 | 3 comments

A few months ago I’ll never forget picking up Mikey on a Friday afternoon and getting their weekly “gram” that said that Mikey was the Student of the Week for his class. I couldn’t contain myself and wait the 10 minutes to get home so I called up Gary immediately to tell him the news, he was sooooooo happy. So happy that Mikey got a special “prize” dessert of ice cream. Gary was sooooo excited that he even blogged about it…. you can read it here

Well I never expected Mikey to get Student of the Week again so soon but he did last Friday. Caught me by total surprise. This time he was Student of the Week because of how much he loves to draw. I’m not saying he loves to draw circles and lines like the rest of his classmates. My kid can D..R..A..W! He drew an octopus, that was also purple, he drew this dinosaur or dragon looking thing at home, but at school he drew the batman logo on the day that he happened to wear his batman t-shirt. He’s barely 2.5 he should not know how to draw like this, but he can. So because of that he got Student of the Week. I know Gary was smiling and beaming up from heaven when he heard that. Mikey totally got the artistic stuff from Gary, I just hope he get’s Gary’s brains too Not saying mommy isn’t smart, but daddy was definitely a smarty-pants and I wouldn’t mind Mikey being one too.

An Honored Hero!

Posted by Sammy on Jan 28th, 2010 | no comments

This afternoon, much to my surprise, I got an email from Jill over at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s South Florida Chapter asking me how I felt about having Gary as one of their Honored Hero’s for the 2010 Light the Night Walks. I could not believe I was being asked this. What an HONOR to even be asked about this. I immediately wrote back and told her that on behalf of my family we’d be honored for Gary to be one of their Honored Hero’s this year. I STILL can’t believe I was asked this but I have the email as proof

Not in a million years would Gary ever think that he’d be considered an Honored Hero for anything let alone something cancer related. Just the thought that the local chapter thought of Gary just amazes me and I’m just speechless and so very humbled by it. Such an amazing honor for Gary and shoot for Mikey and I too to be apart of. Mikey will be barely 3 years old at this year’s walks and I hope he’ll somehow remember everything about it because this year will be a much different walk for us. This year instead of Gary walking with us with his white survivor balloon, survivor t-shirt, and his big ole walking stick we’ll be walking for him holding his lit up gold balloon. *sigh* It won’t be an easy walk to do at all but I know Gary will be there with us in spirit and he’ll be smiling down and Mikey and me for continuing the fight for him.

I’m the team captain of 2 teams this year. One for the Miami walk and another for the Ft. Lauderdale walk. When I posted earlier about how I really felt this was my mission in life, I’m serious about it. It’s my mission to help the LLS raise as much money as possible to help bring a cure to blood cancers.

So if you can spare some of your hard-earned money please do not hesitate to donate towards a FANTASTIC cause. Here are the links to my two personal pages Miami Walk and Ft. Lauderdale Walk. You can donate to either one of my donation pages. Really every little bit helps us out.