What better than this wonderful time of year to jump back in here and update all of you out here in blog land.
It’s been a crazy whirlwind of a year and we just got caught up in our own lives and couldn’t find the time to read your blogs, let alone post to our own.
First and foremost, I know most of you are concerned about The Cowboy and his battle with cancer. To refresh - he was diagnosed with throat cancer last winter. We were fortunate enough to be here in the Rio Grande Valley and about a day’s drive away from the biggest and best cancer center in the world – M D Anderson in Houston. He underwent 33 radiation and 5 chemo treatments. To our new readers - you can read all about that in much more detail in our previous posts.
The good news is that today he is cancer free. We drove down to Houston in August for his 3 month check up and all reports were good. As we made our travel plans to head south this winter we worked it around his 6 month follow up in late November. Same great results. No signs of cancer. Words cannot express how grateful we are!
The bad news is he still hasn’t regained control of his voice. There was a lot of damage as a result of the radiation; the muscles on his voice box are still not working properly. Following the November appointments we went back to Houston the first week in December for a few days for more testing. Following a very thorough video strobe the rest of the time was spent with a speech pathologist. She gave him more exercises and they also prescribed a steroid. I wish I could say that, with the therapy and drugs, we’ve seen an improvement but in all honesty, I can’t. Some days are better than others and we are still very hopeful that he will be singing like Johnny Cash any day now. We both feel that if this is the worst case scenario – then so be it.
So much has happened since I last posted that I don’t even know where to start. Over the next few days of downtime we will try to get everyone caught up and The Cowboy will be sharing some of his experiences with you as well.
However, at this time, we hope y’all are surrounded by your loved ones.
We are sending our warmest wishes for Love, Peace and Joy . . . this Christmas Season and always.
(P.S. We did find the time to get married.)
For many reasons this will be a very special Christmas for us. We hope it is for you too.
