Richly Blessed

Dear Freinds,

How rich we are indeed. God has given us the love and support of so many of you. We had visits from Melissa and her family, from Carol, and from Dave and Susan and their kids this week. It makes life seem bright and hopeful to have these visits.

The Florida house, after some last minute wrangling and minor repairs, seems to be on track to close on Tuesday. The buyers actually moved in today. So we are starting to look at houses here in McKinney. It will take a bit longer before we can seriously house hunt, because we have to get a note from our bank that the loan is paid off and send it to the VA to get a new VA loan certificate.

Platelets were up slightly yesterday, and the white count was marginally low, so I got a half-dose of a blood booster shot. Today we were off from the cancer clinic. I'll go in tommorow afternoon for a blood check.

The esophagus has squeezed almost shut again, so I'm back to liquids only. I am strangely okay and unworried about this. As long as I can get liquids down, I can stay hydrated, and the TPN will sustain me in place of food. We can't get stretched yet because the platelets are too low to accept the bleeding risk.

When we signed up for VA disability compensation, they expedited it by using just the cancer, and talked about evaluating all my other maladies at a later date. So today we got to go visit the VA in south Dallas to see an ortho doc--our first visit to this facility.

It's huge, like a medium sized college campus. They seem to have about every specialty you can imagine. Our appointment letter said to report to room 1E201 in building 2, clinic 16. Deanna printed out several maps from their web site that we used to get parked and into building 2, and even to clinic 16. Room numbers, however, were not marked on the map.

We passed one check in desk labelled cardiac, but it was a 1C room number, so we kept going, looking for 1E201. We failed to find it after looking around a bit, and we decided to ask at the cardiac counter.

As we backtracked, I took a closer look at the restrooms. You got it...1E201 is the restroom room number for clinic 16. It turned out that the ortho guy was working out of the cardiac area.

In the waiting room, I listened to two guys talking. One a recent vet, and the other a Viet Nam vet. One talking about fire base defensive measures used in the middle east, the other about defensive measures at Khe San. Some of the vets could walk. Some used walkers or canes. Others needed wheel chairs. It was good to be around the vets.

We had spent the morning at the Notary Public and at Kinkos doing the house paperwork, and had a too short rest over lunch time before driving to Dallas. We were both tired, but we both got a good laugh out of being sent to the rest room. We allowed extra time to get there because neither of us had been there before, in case there was a traffic problem, or in case we got lost or something.

In fact, we arrived about an hour early. They took us in early though, so the wait wasn't bad at all. I saw my VA file there. It fills five volumes, each about an inch and a half thick. The ortho doc checked out my weak ankles, bad knees, lower back misaligned vertabra.

He had such a good sense of humor! He made me bow down to Deanna to check my range of motion. He was really good. And I got to tell him how good God has been to us, how I was supposed to be dead already, but am still around to serve Him. I love to tell people about it. They get that pained look when I tell them I had terminal cancer, but then they grin when I tell them how God has sustained us.

On the way out, we checked out their retail section, which is sort of like a BX at a small base. There was a small general store, a candle store, a leather store, a coffee shop, and a deli. We were also pleasantly surprised to discover the VA pays a mileage allowance to help defray the cost of travelling to the center. So your last stop before leaving is the cashier, where they give you forty some cents per mile, in cash. I have to go back Tuesday for three more appointments spread out all day long. I will probabaly spend some time checking out their community center.

Then Dave and Susan stopped by at dinner time to visit with their kids, who jumped in the pool with Elizabeth to play. They had pizzas that smelled great, and I had some of my favorite Thai soup.

All in all a busy but very good day,

God Bless,
-Mike