Maybe it's time to blog again Look for new blog name

As most of you know, we came back to the US in January because I was found to have Stage 4 breast cancer. The doctors on the Navy base treated it like it was a death sentence and were sending me home to die. I was very scared but knew that somehow, someway, God was in charge and He would never make the way too hard for me to bear. That He would be with me whatever I had to go through.

Many people told me I should continue the blog and transition it to a blog about my cancer. Well...I don't know about you but I don't think people would want to hear about my feelings, fears and pain when it comes to cancer. I almost wish I had because here it is December...almost a year later and I am heading toward being cancer free. There are pills I have to take and bone treatments I have to have but there has been no surgery, no chemotherapy with the companion hair loss. A pill a day, an IV once a month. God has been good.

I know it may not last, the meds might stop working, they often do, but this wonderful treatment has given me my life back for now and I'm going to enjoy every moment of it.

Slight improvement by April allowed me to go finish out the year teaching in Sicily. It gave me the opportunity, also to say some goodbyes that I didn't get to say in January due to the rapidness of our leaving for the States. It was good to see friends and have the goodbyes we all needed.

Two weeks after we returned we had another health crisis. Bob got up in the middle of the night and suddenly realized something was wrong. My diagnosis, which turned out to be right, was that he was having a stroke. Thanks be to God, again, that I had listened to a radio broadcast from Focus on the Family when they talked about Dr. Dobson's stroke and the TPA that saved him. We immediately got Bob to the hospital where I kept telling them to hurry so he could have the TPA. Two hours and 40 minutes after the stroke started they injected the TPA and Bob immediately felt the difference. You can't have a major incident like that and come back with nothing different, but we are thankful for the slight balance difficulties (really....slight), a bit of numbness on one side and vision impairment on his right side. He can do most things he always did with the only major exception being that he can't drive any more. After 42 years I get to be the driver in the family.

Well, all that to say I might just begin this blog for a bit to tell of the adventures of two people entering their older years. I say entering because before all this happened, we still felt invincible. We were going to be healthy and live forever. Still did all the things we ever did and looked at old age as being VERY far away. Now we realize that God was looking down at us with His sense of humor saying, "Plan all you want, I have your future planned a little differently."

There are things in this that I am very thankful for and things that worry me. Things that make me laugh and others that make me cry. Tomorrow I go for a dr. visit and my monthly treatment. Last time for one blood test and one IV I had to be "stuck" six times. That made me cry. It also made me a little scared about tomorrow.

On Wednesday Bob goes for a CT scan in the area of the clot that caused the stroke. We are expecting all to be healed and for him to be off all specialty medication and doctor's care. I am praying that all is well but I know we don't always have the answers and will leave that in God's hands, too.

Please don't get me wrong, God is not my crutch though I could give reasons why a crutch is a good analogy. I just know that there is a future that is planned, not random, and I choose to believe that there is a God who loves me and will plan what is best for me and for improving our family's relationship with Him.

I think I shall name the new blog "Adventures beyond Italy" since that seems to be where and when the change in our lives happened.

Goodbye for this blogsite. I have copied all the sessions and will someday make a book from them but I am done with my adventure in Italy and so.......... on with life.