New Lease on Life!

Hello to all. It has been 8 months since my last post and it is difficult to know where to start. Rather than go through all the details, I will summarize very briefly the reason for my absence from here.


I was diagnosed with colon cancer in March and had the surgery. If you have to have cancer, this is the best outcome possible. It was only stage 2, no lymph nodes were involved and so I did not need chemo or radiation. How blessed am I!!!!! And I only tell you all this so I can say the following: if you have not had a colonoscopy and you are over 50, run to your doctor now. If I had had my colonoscopy when I should have, we would not be having this discussion. If colon cancer runs in your family, it is even more important. My Grandfather had it in the 1950's but no one remembered it until my diagnosis!


Anyway, we had gone back to Arkansas to see all our doctors, etc so I had the surgery there and we spent the rest of the spring and summer recovering. I am back to normal (or as normal as I've ever been) and ready to get on with our lives.


Bob has been incredible during this very trying time. He was my sole caregiver for quite a few months and my love. Our biggest decision was what to do next with our lives! After much discussion and soul searching, we decided to carry on as originally planned with one exception. We decided to enroll in Cobra for insurance when ours ran out in August. We had planned to take our chances and self insure due to the cost of Cobra but after the surgery bills started coming in we realized it is a bargain compared to the actual cost of health care. So we are good for 18 months and by then there will be options that President Obama is working on right now! I can hear you all laughing but it could happen.........

So we have commenced with the rest of our adventure. We came back to Georgia for the winter and are "volunteering" at Lake Allatoona, Sweetwater Campground in Canton. The campground closed on Labor Day so we are here just for surveillance purposes. We are on duty 4 days and off 4 days. The work days consist of making the rounds of the 151 camp sites. Round trip from our site around the park and back is 5 miles under normal circumstances. Unfortunately most of the park is inaccessible due to the lake spilling over much of the roads and sites. You may have heard of the flooding in Atlanta about 10 days ago. It has been quite an experience and photos will follow. They are predicting a very cold winter here and last year they broke all kinds of records with the temperature so we are bracing ourselves. Our family is petitioning us not to come back for a third winter!