September 8, 2010
My Andrea Bocelli Story  #no 12
submitted by Christine, Wales
 
I have not said all this before maybe now is the time. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002 I had surgery in dec 2002 the following year 2003 I done the chemotherathy and radiotherapy. I then returned to work as a staff nurse in my local community hospital then in march 2004 I was really poorly after a few weeks I was admitted to the local general hospital and had most of my bowel removed with a diagnosis of bowel cancer , I said to my husband o well we beat it before so lets do it again!. I am a practising catholic and my religion is very dear to me but I felt and was very ill I did not have the energy to pray which bothered me a great deal.I did not realise quite how ill I was. My daughter bought me a cd player and my husband brought me in my bocelli cds. I spent hours literally listening to sacred arias which my man was praying for me and i just listened bocelli did it for me I listened and prayed with every aria and it felt so good I knew my god was with me and it felt so good. God has been very good to me I have been to the last three concertys in lagatico to see the man who prayed and gave me so much comfort  I love him very much and would like to say Thank You so much to him I go into a diffrent world whilst listening to him he has been sent by god .
 
by Christine

I thought you might be intrested in a postscript to what Christine has already told you, or more to the point what she didn't tell you, if you like this is my story, you see my wife is a very modest person and left out a lot of the story.
 
 As my wife has already said it all started in 2002 when she was first diagnosed with Breast Cancer her first reaction to being dianosd with cancer was the comment "why me" after sevaral minutes of deep thought she said again "why me, but why shoulnt it be me".  As she said after many months of treatment she returned to her job of being a nurse looking after many patients who were termily ill with cancer.
 
And as she said after returning to nurseing she was admitted to hospital only to be diagnosed with Bowel Cancer this second dianoseis came as what I can only describe as compleate bombshell to me when I was told by the surgeon who had operated on Christine, his next few words will stay with me for ever "Your wife is very seriouly ill, we do not expect her to suvior the operation because she is so weak, and before we opreated we were not sure she would be able to sivor the opration the next twenty four hours will be absoutly crutial because she is so weak"
 
Well she did manage to pull through and as she so often says to me "I did with the strength of God and Anrea Bocelli - they were both by my bedside" from that moment on Andrea became became a very influental person to both our lives, in fact I often think Andrea is the third person in our marrige!
 
In some ways this next part of my story becomes so relevent to the first part of this story, Christmas Day  2007 my wife had to work the early shift at her hospital, and for the first time in nearly forty years of marrige we were spending Christmas day on our own. We would not normaly have the TV on because the rest of the family would be at home, however because we were on our own I looked to see what was on the TV that evening - one programe stood out straight away, BBC Andrea Bocelli life story, we were absoutly thrilled so that evening we sat down with great exciment to watch this programe. At the end of the Andrea life story we both said what a wonderful story, for me it was the concert in Andrea home village of Ljatico, but where was this magical Theroto of silence, where was Ljatico, I turned to my wife and said " I dont know how but I promise you we will be at the next Andrea Bocelli concert in 2008.
 
With that I immeadelty started serching for information on the Internet after a few hours of serching I managed to find your wonderful website www.bocelli.de and signed up Christine as a member, I then found Fourone ticket agency and sent them e-mail asking how we could obtain tickets for Andrea next concert I was so thrilled to have managed to find out all of this information within a few hours of watching Andreas life story. 
 
Within the next few weeks we received a reply from fourone saying that they would add us to their list and notefiy us when the tickets would be available, from then on it was a matter of keeping a look out for information from you. You can probly inmange how excited we was when we received an e-mail from fourone to say we could now send for tickets. And when the tickets arrived we were compleatly blown I thought to myself this is the first stage of over "Mission Acomplished" the next problem was where would would we stay, how would we get to the concert, luckly we have a good freind called Maria who speaks Itaylain who has a holiday home in ligourio about two hours drive from Ljatico so we asked if she would like to come with us to the concert she immeadelty jumped at the chance to be able to see Andrea live.
 
 Fast foward to July 2008 we flew into Pisa I rented a car and we all drove down to Lecria where we were staying for a few days, on the sunday morning of the concert I was so nervious that some thing would go wrong would the - car break down , would we get lost and arrive to late, so I made sure I would give myself enough time, as it was there were no problems we arrived in Ljatico at around 12 -30 in the afternoon found somewhere to park the car and wandered into the square found the little cantina and sat ourselves down orded our wine and food and spent the whole afternoon talking to the local folk and enjoying talking to the diffrent people who were arriving from various countries the around the world I well remembering siiting there thinking is this true but also remebering mission still nor accomplished. then eventual came the time to start to walk down to Thero  silenze we arranged for Christine to be transported down to the concert using the wonderful Medjorie people who were so kind and helpful. Haveing jioned Christine we found our seats and waited for the big moment to arrive for the concert to begin again thinking am I dreaming this are we actualy here! my thoughts wnt back to chrismas 2007 and wacthing Andrea life story I had to pinch myself to see if it could be possible true, but it was, because when Andrea walked onto the stage I turned to Christine and said here's your main man by this time Christine was crying I asked what was wrong she replied nothing I just so happy to be able to see Andrea I then said I told you we would come and hear and hear Andrea sing in the Threato of silence I sat back and said to myself mission accomplished! we have thank God managed to attend every concert since and what wonderful memories we now have of these concerts particularly this year again we arrived early and spent the day in Ljatico and what a day it turned out to be! I was told that Andrea would be coming to the square to meet Gina Lobbridge I went and told Christine that Andrea was comeing to the square she would not beleive me but I purswaded her to walk to the square and sure enough Andrea arrived with that Christine started to cry one of edley loacl ladies asked Christine why are you crying are you unhappy Christine replied I'm not I'm so happy I never thought I would get so close to Andrea! however it got even better for Christine Andrea walked past where Christine was standing and she managed to touch his shoulder I think there are no words to descibe her joy that she had actualy managed to touch Andrea and has luck has it I manged to take a photograpth of this great moment this photograph is now beside her bed and she wakes up evey morning to see this photo.
 
We realy do hope there will be more Andrea concerts at the Therto    and One of our next great ambitions is to see and hear Andrea sing in Assis just like he did last Chrismas when I look back at the last three years I think what a wonderful period in our lives the opportunity to visit the beatufil country of Italy and to meet the wonderfull people of Italy and what joys Andrea brought to Christine and to think it all started with Christine listning to Andrea Scraed Arias in her hour of need and watching Andrea Bocelli life story. 
 
Thank you Renate for all of the good work that you do we both realy look forward to the updates that you send us and to all of the comments that get posted by Andrea fans God bless.      
by Tony
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