Posted by: thepinetree on 11/02/2013 10:43 AM
Updated by: thepinetree on 11/02/2013 10:49 AM
Expires: 01/01/2018 12:00 AM
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Calaveras Community Band votes to donate Fall Concert proceeds to Rosendo Rojas' medical expenses! ~A Mother's Letter By Karen Rojas
Angels Camp, CA...Dear Friends, As many of you may know, Mic Harper, band director, was instrumental (no pun intended!) in starting Rosendo's musical "career" way back in the 4th grade - little "recorders", flutes - at Michelson Elementary School. She then invited him to play on some drums at a small school performance, and that was the real beginning. Rosendo had a natural musical talent - the Rojas bloodline, not mine! - and Mic helped to nurture and encourage that. When he was in sixth grade up at Avery Middle School, she asked him to start participating in what was then the Calaveras County Community Band, and he attended Monday evening rehearsals and performances as often as he could. He joined the Avery Band, which was a class taught by Mic, and went on to attend music and band classes at Bret Harte High School under the direction of Dave Allured for four years...
 
Sometime during that Avery-to-Bret Harte period he also picked up a guitar and our lives would never be the same. No lessons, but boy, did he know what to do with that thing. And then he found Led Zeppelin, or they found him. I was serenaded every night. He knew them all. He did classical and jazz, then Mic had him in the Dixieland Band and Mr. Johnson had him in the Columbia Symphony playing timpani, and he performed in Honor Band several times, etc. etc. Two guitar performances stand out in my memory. One was a contest down at Sacramento State, where he and Sam Dunn performed Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" on "dueling guitars." That one was delicious. And another one was at a semi-annual performance that Mr. Allured required of his students, where Rosendo improvised on his Gibson Les Paul, for about ten minutes, and the audience never sneezed, coughed, or yawned; he played with so much passion and lyrical melody, that I don't think that he even remembered that he was up on stage in front of an audience. I often regret that was not taped, but it will be etched in my heart forever. And I remember one time that Mr. Allured took him and his cohorts out of the playlist, but when the recital was just ending, he announced that the Fabulous Four had just flown in from London, and Rosendo and his friends landed on stage and played the audience out with lots of fun and loud Beatles melodies.
Rosendo had been absent from the Calaveras Community Band due to an assortment of issues during the past few years, but on Monday evening, April 8th he attended his first rehearsal back in a long time, and during break he texted me, saying, "Mama, this is so much fun . . . thank you so much for helping me." Due to his recent excruciating headaches, on Wednesday, April 10th, he had his MRI appointment in Sonora, and then I got the phone call, "Mama, they're making me get undressed and go into the tube again." He said that he could see the looks on their faces in the mirrors. On April 15th, the UC Davis neurosurgery team took out the big baked potato, and because the pathology was so bad - Grade III Anaplastic Ganglioglioma (and rare - the 1% of the 1% of all brain cancers), on May 6th they cut him open again and scraped near and into his brain. They sewed him back up and said there is no radiation or chemo for this one, wrote 24 months on his forehead, and told him to enjoy every day of the rest of his short life.
He is up in Beaverton, Oregon right now, living with his older brother, and will be starting to undergo a regimen of alternative/'complementary therapies and protocols that we couldn't get down here. The treatments will help boost his immune system and some are aggressive enough to try to fight off the little bad guys still multiplying up in his brain. He remains on the Restricted Ketogenic Diet with the advice and friendship of an extremely well certified dietitian in Montana, and now at 90 pounds lost in past five months, is feeling very healthy in almost every other regard. The schedule he will have up there will be physically arduous and mentally exhausting, but he is fighting and family and friends are all praying for him and supporting him and encouraging him to stay the course.
If you are at all able and willing, please join me and Rosendo's Papa at the Calaveras Community Band Fall Concert on Sunday, November 3rd at 3:00 p.m. in the Bret Harte High School Theater. Normally proceeds are donated to the school music programs, but the band voted that this year they would "take care of one of their own." When I received that phone call, I just started sobbing, bawling really . . . with tears of joy and gratefulness.
Just this weekend Rosendo texted me: "Look who I found practices every Monday night from 6:30-8:00 at the high school in Beaverton!!!" I went to the link and found out that the Beaverton Community Band just moved rehearsals indoors after practicing in the park all summer. Can you believe it?
At age 23, Rosendo is on a different journey than most of his friends or any of us for that matter, but I am not letting my son go without a fight. Hopefully this updates some of you that I don't see or talk to regularly. All of your prayers and support give Rosendo, and me, encouragement and hopefulness. Thank you so much to each and every one of you for your faithfulness.
We look forward to seeing you on Sunday, November 3rd.
Sincerely,
Karen Rojas
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