This summer was supposed to be a relaxing break from my crazy year with cancer. However, it has not exactly turned out that way. We arrived in northern CA about a month ago to help my mom through some medical procedures.

My mom had a biopsy done on some underarm lymph nodes and she received the results a few days ago.

Mom has low-grade B cell follicular lymphoma (Grade 1), a type of blood cancer. Although she isn’t officially staged, it appears that her cancer is at least Stage III. Continue reading →

One day’s exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.”  — John Muir

I wore my JACKET all day yesterday!  This out-of-body experience was due to the 70 degree high temps at Pinecrest Lake, a half hour uphill from my mom’s house in Sonora, my childhood home in the Sierra Nevada foothills of northern California.   We’re feeling pretty lucky that our escape from Texas is paying off, since it looks like we are dodging the hottest summer on record in Austin. Continue reading →

One thing I’ve learned from the whole cancer thing is that, while it’s good to have plans, you never know what’s around the corner.

Over the past year of scans, chemo and surgeries, I’ve changed my perspective from having “definite” plans to creating “general” plans and just seeing what happens when I get there. I feel lighter as a result, telling myself I don’t really control things anyway. This is very challenging to my “INTJ” make-up, but I’m runnin’ with it!

Our “general” plans for the summer in northern California are working out just fine so far with some changes. The first little change was when I had to come out a week earlier than planned to help my mom deal with a small medical procedure. But we ended up with some extra time in northern California. Not bad! Continue reading →