Memo, I'm so glad you checked in too, thanks! As for having to point out symptoms to your docs, I'll join you in gnashing teeth and pulling out hair - seems these days a huge responsibility is foisted off on the patient to be the seeing eye dog for the doctor! Grrrrr! And we're paying these meatheads buckets of cash for what? Somebody needs to remind me .... ! I'm tethered to just two docs now - the SurgOnc and the RadOnc (Surgical Oncologist and Radiation Oncologist, am done with my ChemoOnc). Of the two, the RadOnc is thorough to the bone - literally! - and no gland anywhere on my bod escapes his scrutiny. Reading your story makes me better understand his zeal and now more appreciative of his thoroughness. Funny, I went into to this whole 'fall down the rabbit hole' thinking the SurgOnc would be the tough one - I was wrong. I am grateful that my RadOnc is so determined, am grateful that I lucked out and got him. Left to my own devices, I just know I'd screw it up and miss something important. But, it shouldn't be up to me - or you, either .... it's just not right. Heaving a deep sigh now, I truly wish you strength, courage and the very best to you and your beautiful family!

Debbie, sorry i haven't posted, but i was thinking about you and Gary and hoping that he gets better soon. It's sad about Bijoux too - you get attached to these animals. Hope you post soon and let us know what's happening. Snow is falling here as of this morning. There's not much accumulating as it's still just above 0, but it's supposed to be like this all week, so it looks like this is it for us. Still, the mild temperatures and sunny skies have really gone towards shortening the coming winter - fingers crossed that it's like this at the other end and we don't get snow in May again! Last weekend was so nice! I was outside the whole weekend, and i think the weekend before too - can't remember for sure. Anyway, i did EVERYTHING! The plants i haven't been able to get back into gardens were planted in the vegetable bed, all the containers dumped (some i brought inside quite awhile ago), leaves applied as mulch to some of the gardens and some of the more tender plants (Miss Morden Sunrise now wears a cardboard box filled with leaves in the hopes that she won't die right back to the ground again this year), and all my containers are picked up, organized and stored! Whew! I even hung my Christmas lights out! Audric, glad to hear that your Craft Fair did so well. I haven't heard about ours, how much they made, probably because the parents organize it and not the teachers. If it was the teachers, they would have been making a big deal of it in the staff room! LOL Are you a teacher, Audric? What grade? I'm a library technician at our school here. Well, i must run as we're going to town this morning. We're going to have a sulking dog because dh asked his mother to come with us so now the dog has to stay home. He loves to come with us and knows all the fields where there might be cows or horses and gets all excited when he sees them! Last week when we went past the buffalo farm, he leaped into the back of the van and stuck his nose out one of the vent windows! It was quite funny! Anyway, Debbie, before i go, here's a picture of the little grandguy/dinosaur: Hoping again that Gary is better and home again. Take care, all! Marcia

I'd have told him, quietly and pleasantly, that my health is fragile, that I've been (deathly?) afraid of getting a cold, and that I'm not enthusiastic about sharing air space with him. That, as we'd been there first and he'd joined us, that I felt that it would be courteous of him to leave ... but that if he chose to not do so, that I was going to. I'd not tell him that he was about as popular within 100 feet of me as a suicide bomber would be within about a quarter mile. ole joyful P.S. My friend (a smoker, and in more fragile health than I) just had a cold when we were riding in my car together, and I came down with it a few days later. It was mainly a nuisance and not that troublesome for me, but it did send him to the hospital for a couple of days before he got through. I considered missing a reunion of a dozen of so former Korea missionaries in Toronto (120 miles away) while it was on, to avoid spreading it to my friends, but when I felt a bit better, decided to go. As someone said, I have a feeling that when our cold symptoms are most evident, that most of the contagious aspect has passed. I might be a bit biased, do you think? o j

The previous owner of the cell phone number I've had for 22 months racked up debt all over town. I've gotten more calls for him from creditors than I have people I know. I always inform the creditors of the situation and ask to be taken off their list, but they persist until I come totally unglued after another call. I've also gotten a number of computer calls with no one at the other end. I usually type the full number into Google and it takes me to a site to complain about these calls. It doesn't help but it makes me feel better that I'm not alone. :-) Jodi-