Our RV Adventures

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First off, Jan and I want to thank everyone for their good wishes and prayers. We’re really sorry that we’ll have to miss the upcoming Escapade, and of course, we won’t be able to give our Gate Guarding seminar. But next year’s Escapade will be in Tucson, AZ starting March 8th, 2015, and we plan to be there.

Once again this morning Jan and I, and Mister, of course, sat outside and had our coffee and the last of the Hruska’s kolaches that we got the other night when we had hamburgers there. But it was warming up pretty fast and we finally came in after a short time.

Jan had been waiting for a call from the oncologist to get an appointment for any possible treatment recommendations. And of course they had to call while I was on the phone with my niece Darby, updating her on the Chinese Consulate visa situation.

When Jan did call the oncologist’s office she ended up playing phone tag for a while until they finally called back about 2:30 and set Jan’s appointment for next Friday, May 9th.

Of course this eliminates our last-ditch leave date of Wednesday, May 7th to be able to make the Escapade in Goshen. But it always was a slim chance, anyway.

I checked with Fantastic Fan about the replacement lift motor they were sending me, and found out it was going to be delivered to Brandi’s today. So our delay in leaving means we’ll be able to get the part before we leave, and also we’ll be able pick up the Chinese visas from the Consulate on Wednesday.

About 4:15 Jan and I headed out for dinner. On our way we stopped off at the park office to pay up on my 50 amp fees here at the park. When we checked in we planned on leaving for Elkhart today, so I only paid for 11 days instead of the full 14 we were registered for. So I wanted to stop off and pay for the remaining 3 days.

That done, we headed up to Ellinger to Peters BBQ to have the Friday Night BBQ and Seafood Buffet one last time. Figured since we had to stay here extra days, we might as well enjoy it as much as possible.

Well, I guess ‘enjoy’ is a relative word. Last Friday night we ‘enjoyed’ it so much that we hurt afterwards. So this time we decided to go for just Mild Discomfort and didn’t go back for seconds. But then what’s the use of going to a buffet, if you don’t do seconds.

It’s a real quandary.

Now that things have settled down, I’m probably going to try to install the new slideout shear pin, along with a few other chores around the rig. Though we didn’t head out to Elkhart today, we still have to move back to the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails on Monday, our 3rd visit this year.

Actually when all of this started, I booked us back and forth between Colorado River and Lake Conroe all the way through the end of August, since we didn’t know at the time how this was going to play out. So as soon as we finally hit the road, probably next Saturday or Sunday, I’ll go online and cancel all the rest of the reservations.

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Thought for the Day:

Complaining about a problem without proposing a solution is called whining.

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Well, RV’ers say that their plans are written in Jello, and that’s very true in our case this time.

It now looks pretty certain that Jan and I  will not be able to make the 54th Escapade up in Goshen this month. We were originally supposed to leave for Elkhart tomorrow morning (Friday), but some bad news/good news brought that to a screeching halt. While we were waiting for it to get a little warmer up north, we were also waiting for things to play out with the results from Jan’s mammogram on February 18th.

As has happened several times in the past, they found something that warranted a further look. So in March, they did a diagnostic mammogram and an ultrasound. And in the past, this is where it stopped.

But this time they found a problem that called for a needle biopsy, which was done toward the end of March. The diagnosis from the biopsy was ductal atypical hyperplasia. In layman’s terms this is a lot of funny looking cells in a milk duct. And funny looking cells are sometimes an indicator and precursor for cancer.

So on April 16th Jan had a lumpectomy, or more correctly, an excisional biopsy. And today, May 1st, is when she had her follow-up appointment and got her results. And this is where the bad news/good news came in.

The bad news was that they found carcinoma in situ, an early form of cancer.

The good news is that the lumpectomy got it all, leaving only healthy tissue.

But her surgeon wants her to see an oncologist to follow up on any further treatment. The only thing that has been suggested is that she might have to start taking Tamoxifen, a daily pill to prevent any possible further cancer growth. It’s not considered chemotherapy, and is only about $10 a month from Wal-Mart..

The surgeon’s office faxed over Jan’s records to the oncologist to be evaluated. Then they will call us to schedule an appointment. It’s probable that this will be late next week if we’re lucky. Since the latest we could leave here and still make the Escapade is next Wednesday the 7th, that’s probably not going to happen.

As I told Jan, if we had to have bad news in this situation, this is the best news we could have.

Now back to our day today.

We left the rig about 8:45, heading down to Clear Lake for Jan’s appointment. We made a quick stop for gas and a bathroom break at the Flying J in Brookshire, finally making it to the doctor’s office about 10:45 for her 11am appointment.

We actually were in and out of the doctor’s office fairly quickly, and Jan decided she wanted to have lunch at Monterey’s Little Mexico down in Dickinson, because she wanted to have a Margarita, understandable under the circumstances.

Coming back up to Clear Lake, Buc-ee’s was on the way so we stopped in for some of their great muffins. Then after a quick client visit and a stop at Half-Price Books, we headed back north into Houston, so I could stop off at Interstate Batteries to drop off the 4 old batteries from yesterday’s change out. I definitely wanted my $129.90 core charge back.

Then it was on to Brandi’s house in Katy, arriving about 2:45, and giving us both time for a nice nap before we met Brandi, Lowell, and Landon at our favorite Little V’s Vietnamese Bistro.

As you can tell form the photo, Landon has a good time where ever he goes.

And after another great meal, we finally got home about 7:15, after a long and eventful day. Tomorrow will probably be just a stay around the rig day. Well deserved.

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Thought for the Day:

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” — Thomas Mann

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