Look Book

t "Not a day goes by that I don't wear the color blue," says jewelry designer and artist Brady Legler. People have different reasons for liking the color. For some it symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, faith, truth, or heaven. But for Brady it's personal. "Blue is one of the miracles that saved my dad." When his father was diagnosed with one of the rarest and most deadly cancers in the world, anaplastic thyroid carci- noma in May 2003, the doctors gave him only three months to live. Brady was an eighth grade student in Kansas City at the time. Several of the top cancer research centers around the country turned his father away, telling him that his case was incurable. A break came when his father talked to a doctor at Johns Hopkins who gave him a slim hope for survival if he received twice-daily radiation treatments and chemotherapy. Getting radiation twice a day is almost unheard of but was necessary in this case because of the aggressive nature of the cancer. The treatments taxed his father's physical and emotional limits. The thought of getting on a narrow radiation table and being elevated 7 feet off the ground to be targeted from 8 different angles was getting the best of him, he was falling apart inside. His father prayed more than he had ever prayed in his life. The Memorare was his go to prayer. One of those prayers may have brought him relief from an unexpected source: a neighbor who taught and practiced meditation. She told him to imagine that the cancer cells were turning blue and dissolving while he was strapped down for radiation. Blue became his mantra during every session. When the treatments fi nally ended later that summer, his father had lost over 60 pounds and felt so weak at times that it became too hard climb more than one or two stairs in their home. He contin- ued to pray and held on to that image of the color blue while he slowly gained his strength. His father is still alive today, one of only a handful of survivors. For Brady, blue means hope and optimism. "Blue fuels my creativity. It pushes me while it calms me." It's one of the reasons why blue sapphires are a favorite for him. He sees his jewelry design as an extension of himself and wants the people who wear his jewelry to feel that same sense of being energized and calm at the same time. Advertorial 70 www.thejewelrybook.com The Blue S tory The Blue S tory

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