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Manuel Garcia, a proud youthful fatherWas known on his block as a hard working manWith a wife and a family, a job and a futureHe'd everything going according to planOne day Manuel Garcia, complaining of stomach painsWent to the clinic to find out the causeHis body was found to have cancerous tissueIgnoring the order of natural lawsSo Manuel Garcia of Milwaukee CountyChecked into the medical complex in townSuddenly seeing his thirty-nine yearsLike the sand in an hourglass plummeting down"What are my choices?" cried Manuel Garcia"You've basically two,' was the doctor's decree"Your cancer untreated will quickly be fatalBut treatment is painful with no guarantees."And so it began, Manuel's personal odysseyLong sleepless nights in a chemical dazeWith echoes of footsteps down long lonely corridorsTolling his minutes and hours awayWith the knowledge that something inside was consuming himLetras de cancionesManuel Garcia was filled with despairHe'd already lost forty pounds to the cancerAnd now to the drugs he was losing his hairAfter nine weeks in treatment the doctor came callingSaid "Manuel, we've done about all we can doYour cancer could go either way at this junctureIt's out of our hands and it's now up to you."He looked in the mirror, a sad frightened strangerSo pale, so wrinkled, so lonely, so scaredDiseased, isolated, and feeling unlovable126 pounds and no hairHe dreamed of his Carmen at sixty without himHis four little children not having their DadOf Thursday night card games at Julio'sAnd everything else he'd not doneThat he wished that he hadAwakened from sleep on the day of his dischargeBy shuffling feet going all around his bedManuel opened his eyes and thought he was still dreamingHis wife, and four friends with no hair on their headsHe blinked and he looked again, not quite believingThe four shiny heads all lined up side by sideAnd still to that point not a word had been spokenBut soon they were laughing so hard that they criedAnd the hospital hallways were ringing with voices"Patron, we did this for you," said his friendsAnd they wheeled him out to the car they had borrowed"Amigo, estamos contigo ves."So Manuel Garcia returned to his neighborhoodDropped off in front of his two-bedroom flatThe block seemed unusually deserted for SundayHe drew a deep breath and adjusted his hatBut before he could enter the front door flew openManuel was surrounded with faces he knewFifty-odd loved ones and friends of the familyWith clean-shaven heads and the words "we love you"And so Manuel Garcia, a person with cancerA father, a husband, a neighbor, a friendWith a lump in his throat said"I'm not one for speechesBut here I have something that needs to be saidI felt so alone with my baldness and cancerNow you stand beside me, thank Heaven aboveFor giving me strength that I need may God Bless YouAnd long may we live with the meaning of loveFor giving me strength that I need may God Bless YouAnd long may we live with the meaning of love." From Letras Mania