That makes sense. I wondered about the venting. Your poor mom, LOL she'll never hear the end of it!

Hi, our daughter (or is now my, i'm still not sure what to write), also lost her dad when she was 18, it has only been a little over a year for us. she was to go out of town to go to university and 2 weeks before i said to her maybe you should go to school here (we are a university and college city) incase something happens to your dad and you have to leave school early. so she went to school here, still on a scholarship, the university here was her last choice to go to, she did not want to go to school here, but she did on her scholarship, and told me everyday how much she hated the school here, (i would like to say that our home life is/was fine, so she didn't want to leave because of that, it was just that the outoftown school had more to offer), so on feb. 21 her dad was taken by ambulance to the hospital, and was taken off of life support the next evening. she still says to me, i can't believe -so and so, says that they are so upset because they couldn't get a ticket to see a bank and go on and on, and my daughter says yah, but my dad died and you're worried about a ticket and they reply with nothing. they all know but they nothing. we had to go to the university to get some marks estimated i went with her, we also had to write a letter and attach a death certificate, do you know that not of the administration people offered us their sympathy? i worked in that office with most of those people too. i couldn't believe how cold they were, maybe they were told not to say anything to anyone as an office policy, i know that i didn't care when i worked there, i could just see the grief of some "kids" face someone who lived out of town, it was heartbreaking. i think that young people your age, don't know how to react, and perhaps that they have never lost someone as close to them. our son, is 5 years older than his sister, and he is employed, he was overwhelmed by the people he knows and so was i. but after 2 months these people seemed to "forget" us, which i read was normal. do you have student services, for counselling? we don't have anything here like that and the same for grief support for even me. if i had a gambling problem i could get a ton of help (we now have a casino here). i see people who knew my husband and they just don't know how to even say, i'm sorry. so i will say to you, i am so sorry for your loss. debbie

ttodd, I am so happy that your mom is doing well. As a parent, you want to protect your children (no matter what age). And support from family, friends and a strong will are all important parts of treatment and sounds like your mom has that down! I pray that some day, less people will hear the words "you have cancer".

Hi Linda in good old Iowa, If you're thinking of scrap value, many say that silver is undervalued these days in relation to the price of gold, and there has been a fairly stable comparison between them, traditionally. Silver's value has been improving relative to its relation to gold in the past year or so and some feel that its price will rise faster than gold's, proportionately. With the huge debt that the U.S. has, and some analysts say that when a country's debt gets up near the value of it's annual value of goods produced, that there becomes a possibility that it may be difficult for it to recover - and the U.S. level is close to that now. Furthermore they're printing money by the boatload ... which will reduce the value of a dollar. I heard some reference a while ago to the Weimarization of our economy, a reference to the German economy after World War I - remember the stories of having to take a wheelbarrow load of currency to the store to buy a not-very-large item? Having a thing that carries value may become more important than having pieces of paper called currency, before long. I think that the days of the U.S. Dollar being the world's reserve currency are numbered. Sorry to rain on your parade. ole joyful