This month's calendar Archives
IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!
As you may recall, about a month ago I went to the emergency room for what turned out to be diverticulitis. In the process of confirming the diagnosis, they did a CAT scan. Well, as part of the follow-up, they discovered another irregularity that showed up on the CAT scan and I was told I should see my urologist. So, I went to Portland and saw two doctors late last week and it was confirmed that I have bladder cancer. That was the bad news. The good news is that it's a "good" cancer (if there is such a thing). In the doctor's words, "If you have to have cancer and could pick from a menu, this is the one you would select". He said the tumor is "superficial" and isn't very invasive so he can remove it with - I hope - relative ease and I should be able to leave the hospital the same day. I don't have a schedule for the surgery yet, but from what they told me last week, it will come around the middle of December. If you told me a month ago that I would be glad that I have diverticulitis, I'd have said you were crazy. But if I hadn't had the testing for that, they would have not discovered this problem for a long time because I have no symptoms and feel fine. I feel very blessed that it was discovered in time. I was a little scared at first when I was told I had the big "C", but now that I have had a chance to digest it all, I feel it is just a "bump in the road" and life will go on. I have a lot of support from friends and family and this has been a big help.
Anyway, there are other things to talk about. This has been such a busy week for me.
After a heck of a wind and rain storm over the weekend, I spent a couple of hours raking up all the debris in the yard on Sunday. Dave is giving me a bad time about doing that because since I finished that project, we've had a lot more wind this week and the yard debris is right back where it was before I started! In addition to the stuff falling from the trees, we also lost our power for about 3 hours so that meant resetting all the clocks again. I'm sure it won't be the last time we'll have to do that this winter!
We started out Monday by heading for Salem for an 11:00 a.m. visit with our financial advisor. He gave us a call a couple of weeks ago and said he wanted to go over our accounts to see if we can squeeze a little more money out of them. More money is a good thing - so we met with him and decided that by switching and changing things around in our accounts, we might end up with a few more dollars in income each month. With the NBA season pretty much down the drain because of that stupid labor disagreement, we needed to re-assess our finances because the now-idle Trail Blazers were a significant portion of our income.
While we were in Salem we called our daughter Leslie and invited her to lunch with us. We ended up getting together not only with her but our two oldest granddaughters too. The girls were released from school early that day and so Leslie picked them up and we had lunch at the Oregon Garden in Silverton. They have a nice restaurant at the resort, and since it's the off season, we had the place pretty much to ourselves.
Tuesday was the Nehalem Bay Garden Club's annual wreath making workshop. This is where all the members get together and bring whatever cuttings from shrubs they can find in their yards to make wreaths. It is always a fun time to see some of the personalities come out with their creative wreath making. Usually we hold our workshop a little later in November but this year it was earlier and most of the holly and cedar branches were lacking berries. I hope I can keep the wreaths fresh for the holidays. The holly berries always look so festive on a green wreath. We held our workshop out at Alder Creek Farm this time as the person who normally has the workshop is moving and we had to find an alternative spot. Anyway, we have arranged with Alder Creek Farm to use their facility from now on to have workshops and store our plants that we will be selling at our plant sale next spring. We managed to pick the perfect day for our wreath making (the Garden Gods are always watching over us) and we were able to make our wreaths outside on an unusual sunny November afternoon. Dave spent the afternoon attending a city workshop and then came home long enough to grab dinner before we both headed out to various meetings.
We're having an open house for our new Fire Station tonight, so Dave and I will be helping out with that. The fire station was built to accommodate all three towns, Manzanita, Nehalem and Wheeler. Dave will be helping with the parking of cars (there obviously are not enough parking spaces at the fire station to accommodate the entire community at one time) so there are several places close by that have agreed to using their parking lots and then people will be shuttled to the fire station from there. I will be stationed in the radio room so when the guided tours come by I will talk about what goes on in there. We had a walk-through of the station on Wednesday night in preparation for the open house. We are so proud of our new fire station and it adds so much to the community. In fact, last Saturday I attended my CPR re-certification class at the station and it was really nice. The CPR class went well but I feel sorry for anyone I would have to administer CPR to as it is getting harder for me to get down on my hands and knees. We also reviewed our first aid and so I am ready in that category as well.
Gosh, it is hard to believe that Thanksgiving is next Thursday!! We are having our whole family down at our place, but will be holding our dinner on Saturday instead of Thursday. It won't matter, as long as we can be together and I am thankful for that.
Again, I don't want anyone to worry about me. I am going to be just fine. I wish it hadn't happened, but since it has, I'll deal with it and move on. I will keep you updated in the journal every Friday as I get more information.
