The Cowboy’s View

M.D. Anderson, WHAT a place! I guess all I can compare it to is when London built their new Cancer center. I thought it was huge. M. D.’s parking garage is bigger than London’s whole hospital. It would be like comparing McDonalds to the Waldorf. Normally a place this big would make me “Nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs” but everyone of these professionals make you feel like you are a brother or sister with a problem and they have a genuine concern for you.

In the past three days I have been poked, probed, and prodded by not less than Ten Doctors and at least eight technicians. They have done more tests on me than I have had in all the rest of my life. I have had CT scans, Internal Videos, Barium swallows, X-rays, Scopes, blood tests and the list still goes on. These people are thorough. Tomorrow, Thursday there will be a 40 member team made up from every field Surgeons, Speech Therapists, Dentists, Radiologists, Oncologists, Dieticians, Physiatrists and the list goes on. They will all sit and talk about the many test results and come up with the best approach to treating me.

All this has happened over the past three days and it seems like weeks. By Friday “The Team” will have a plan in place. What it sounds like so far is that they want to save my GOLDEN voice, so I can continue to share the pearls of wisdom with the world. In order to do that, some of them have been leaning towards Spot Radiation over a six week program. I guess I am not going to be feeling very good for that six weeks because radiation does some stuff to you but once I come out the other side I will be the same “Jolly, knowledgeable little gem” I have always been. Since I am in Texas they gave me a choice “You can either go cry in the truck or Cowboy up” !

The Princess and I just can’t get over how things out of our control have been preparing us for this part of our life. We live in our motorhome and are totally mobile. Many we see coming and going daily are from far away, staying in hotels, renting cars, eating nothing but restaurant food, living out of a suitcase and spending money like water.

We are retired and have no fixed schedule to worry about like others with jobs, homes to maintain, payments that need to be made and wandering among strangers for weeks at a time with no one to divert your attention from the problems you are having. In a campground you are always surrounded by happy people having relaxed enjoyable times. The fact that I turned 65 last year and got on Medicare that is paying the thousands of dollars this is costing without it costing us a dime. You just can’t buy this amount of treatment unless you have very very deep pockets.

Days have seemed like weeks to both of us. There is so much going on every day and it seems we may not be staying in contact with each of you but some days we are just exhausted and have taken in so much information it becomes a blur. Please excuse us if we bother you too much. Please excuse us if we haven’t called to update you recently. It brings back to mind an old book “I’m dancing as fast as I can”.

That’s about how we feel. So for now I sign off.

When in doubt, let your horse do the thinkin'.

Happy Trails to You, Until we meet again.

Ending Note: This was written a couple of days ago but not posted until today – Friday; we are still waiting to hear officially but it looks like radiation treatment (only) at this point.