No Answers Yet???? Please have patience...
....even IF it takes decades....

      Life sometimes gives you more than you can handle all at once, but that is NO reason to get down and out....throw a hug to a person and you would be surprised how much it can help both of you. So many gripe about simple things, I have tried to be as honest as I could to prove to people that you CAN get through the worst and still continue on with life AND have a positive attitude! 

     The last 15 years' "trials" have included the care of my mother's estate and the monitoring of her care with Alzheimer's, which went on for 11 years...now that she has passed into a better place and is with the Lord, it will take a while to get back to normal. 

     Things have changed for my neighbor up the road from me who needed daily care and a few days prior to his probably passing, he fell and broke his hip and sadly has had to adjust to lots of changes at 92. I am pleased to say that I moved him into a wonderful adult foster care facility much like my mother was in while she lingered with the Alzheimers, and so now I know he will be much better off. He now also has this disease and is now in Hospice care. Oops! He changed his mind and started to eat again...who knows when he will be ready to leave and go to his reward with the Lord! I never thought I signed on to almost 30 years of care with my neighbor, but I loved Phil and would do it all over again. Phil went home on 28 December 2003, He was 93 years young and I miss him all the time.

     When you throw in helping with my almost 98 year old father-in-law, and still healing from the effects of a car wreck a while back, which kinda messed up my shoulders, knee and back. He too has gone on to the Lord at 99y 9m & 28days. I had promised him I would dance with him on his 100th birthday and he said "nein!~" and I got a bit worried as I had to learn to dance for our wedding back in 1973 so I might have had to learn again...Yikes!

     Lots of  things have gotten way behind over this past period, but now I am slowly pulling myself out of the mire, so watch for upcoming changes.... I guess if I look at the whole thing optimistically, that God chose to kill the car and not me, I cannot complain. Please remember you CAN accomplish more if you take things in stride and use the help the Lord has given to us all.

     This will show you what the summer/fall/winter of 98 and the year of 99 and 2000 has been and will be spent doing. Healing from this accident, both surgeries now behind me and hopefully no more, I mean even I do not want to say I had a triple set of baker's dozen surgeries & pain procedures in the decade of the 90's! Now, we are going to start fresh! and hopefully not repeat such things again. The torn knee is sort of behaving, so I am in a watch & see mode, which helps to deal with other health matters <g>.  If you want to see how bad that 98 rollover was please e-mail me and I will send you the images. All my cop friends are just amazed that I am still alive, as the SUV rolled 4 times and flipped end to end twice, and since stupid here was about 1000 feet from her drive I had popped my belt off. Now until I am in my garage it does not come off.

     If your e-mail not answered, please be patient....I will get caught up eventually.....right? I am finally getting lots of data up daily, so watch and check the search engine often. And I do mean often!!! I have added almost 1000 pages of data in the last 3 months! Then for those of you who keep asking to see some recent pix of our family. Well so much for the end of the surgeries, just had more knee surgery May 26, 2000 and worse back surgery coming up in December...the first nasty test will be Oct 6th, and I gather I will be pretty sore for a number of days after that...when the actual surgery comes I will still type as able...I have heard I may be laid up for months. 

     The surgery for the fusion was December 19th 2000 and the first few months were horrid, but slowly I got back to snuff...at least enough to keep adding books to the Memorial On Line library. Was even finally feeling a bit better and allowed to drive, the fickle finger of fate struck again, when on April 1st (some April Fool's day joke) another idiot Lee Michael Mayville decided that red lights did not mean he was supposed to stop so he slammed into my van and it appeared that he almost killed the guy in front of me, I have never seen that much blood all over the road.  It has to get better someday??? Have no idea if I will EVER be better from this :(((( I could not say much about this for a while as we were attempting to recoup some of the medical bills from the idiot Lee Michael Mayville who ran the red and slammed into the side of my van. He had the audacity to get out of his car, or what was left of it and feel bad for himself. The guy he hit in front of me has yet to gain full use of his arm because Mayville speared him and pushed him into a telephone pole and near to cut his arm off. Sadly after picking the WRONG attorney to handle this mess so much for getting compensated for all the bills.

     Am finally beginning the actual upload of tombstone photos, this will be a VERY slow process. I began with the Coughran Cemetery north of Fowlerville, so you can go check it out. Decided to add the cemetery indexes before I start the rest of the images so you can play with data while I am laid up, and now I have over 30 up. These still need lots and lots of double checking with the tombstone images but at least the data might prove to be clues. After putting a number of the cemeteries on line it became apparent to me that this section needed its own division of LivGenMI.com so I am in the process of totally rebuilding a new section that will divide up the cemeteries into cities, townships & villages.

     Had the first surgery on 8 August and so will be slow going for a while, second was 18 September and third was Oct. 24th, which was too much for any human being. Three surgeries in 12 weeks has laid me low. Now have had two more shoulder surgeries and knees and spine still to go. 

     Don is getting better slowly, but his back was much worse than mine. He has steel plates, screws, and cadaver bone inside him. phew....I call him the titanium man like in the wizard of oz.

     As usual the medical malady goose dropped on me again and I came down with Bel's Palsy in April. They do not think my face will ever get better, there was just too much damage from the Ramsey Hunt syndrome. It is the 4th worst kind of the palsy you can get. The specialists said, that cold wind in your ear, stress, major pain for a length of time and pneumonia can cause it. Since I had accumulated all of the above, I was cooked.  My specialist, who has cared for people with this disease for over 20 years said that he had never before seen a case as bad as this, the pox sores were all over my inner ear and he thought for a time I would lose my hearing too. Thankfully that did not happen. I had to go through oral surgery and during that Bonine cut a nerve in my lower jaw that has left the jaw in anguish 24/7. I have since learned I did not chose well in this regard either. Thankfully there is medicine to at least ease some of the grief caused by his error.

     During all of this many of you know our two pubbies went over the Rainbow Bridge, so we were very lonely. The good part of all of this is that we just adopted two more "kids" and you can see some of their antics on their own site.  Their names are Sophie and Fritz, had forgotten how fast 8 legs can run. Can't believe they are now just about 2 years old, what a joy in our lives they have been. 

     Now almost 8 months they are helping Mom forget the newest medical challenges, more shoulder surgeries. This attack of Bell's Palsy is one of the worst forms, involved both eye and oral surgery, and still dealing with the accident from 2001. I figure by 2008 they will have remade me into the Bionic Woman, wonder if I will look as good? <g> Still working on the cemeteries and the books to add to the MARDOS Memorial Library. Now that I am finally in between the latest round from the red light runner which I could not talk about until the lawsuit was over, I hope to be able to get even more GREAT stuff on line for you the researcher.

     Except for the redo of the spinal fusion which I had gone through in Dec of 2000 which Mayville wrecked when he ran the red light and eventual knee replacement surgery, I am finally on the mend. The lawsuit is over and sadly I did not choose right in the attorney I got to help in this matter, would NEVER recommend him again. There is nothing that will cause me to believe he did not give up and he felt he could not win a large amount so he went on to others. If you are needing an attorney in the Howell area near the courthouse, please contact me and I will tell you who NOT to choose. I also have supposed doctor thoughts too! We ended up with less than one third of the medical expenses so far.  There have been 27 surgeries in these 5 years, and numerous pain treatments. I am forced to use something called a TENS unit to stop the horrific pain in my spine. The unit which stands for Transdermal Electronic Neural Stimulator sends 6 shocks a second into my spine to tell it that there is no pain. To sleep at night I have to take strong meds as you cannot sleep with one of these units on. All of my doctors, the pain doctor, the orthopedic surgeon, the neurologist, and my regular doctor recommended I go back to Dr. Jason Brodkey, my neurosurgeon. I have planned that for next summer. I think then I hope to end this chapter, 43 surgeries in 21 years is just to much for anyone. :(((

     In December of 2003 my dear neighbor Phil went to be with his wife Ellie. At 93 he lived a good life! I miss him everyday and hope that he is happy at last. 

     While I was laying around surgery after surgery, I became nothing short of a beached whale:((( So knowing I would be in bed another 4 months from fusion again, I said enough is enough. I gave up my 6-7 bottles of Pepsi a day and now drink one in the morning to wake me up, and the rest of the day I drink something also made by Fruit 2o, a fitness water with vitamins & minerals. I drink probably 6-7 of those a day. I hired my long time physical therapist from the hospital and

 is the best thing I ever did! The first 3 - 4 weeks were horrid and I kept calling him to ask in a funeral was included in the cost as I was dying! Now 7 months later, I am on the treadmill for 2 miles a day, the bike for a mile a day and lift weights for about an hour to an hour & a half. I have lost about 25 pounds and more importantly about 8-10 inches from my body. I now fit in clothes I got back from 1998 <g>. If you live in or near Livingston County, contact him to see how he can help you! He is just the best thing I have done for my health in ages. I continued for another year and was up to 50+ pounds gone and 18 inches of fat gone, wow what a difference in how I feel!

     Well guys, the melee continues...just as I was really getting into shape we decided to take a trip to CA for our nephew's wedding...oh my!!! the trip from HELL!!! The very first night where we stopped to pick up hubby's sister who could also drive the bus because with my eyesight it is difficult, I fell & broke my ankle! Glory Be!!! When does this nonsense end? So the next 3 weeks during the travel which included driving in sleet, snow, freezing cold weather then comes a blown tire, and after that we all come down with the stomach flu. That was a challenge, 1 potty & 2 wastebaskets <g> and 3 people. Then when we get to CA it is the coldest & rainiest it has ever been. In 10 days we had over 20" of rain, mud slides, sink holes etc. Had waited a lifetime to see the Rose Parade and everyone I had asked said the very best part was smelling the fragrance of the flowers! Due to the cold the only thing we smelled was horse poo!  The wedding was awesome! even if I could not dance or barley walk due to the ankle. Found out my nephew is an award winning swing dancer! Phew! On the way home we ran out of propane and the engine froze and we also got bad gas, so we had to be towed...that was a trip. Climbing into a semi tow truck with a cast on. Finally home and my ortho surgeon removes that cast & puts me in a moon boot to keep ankle fluid he said. A month with that and then a splint for another month and the ankle was as good as it was going to get.

     The spine was still a disaster so neurosurgeon recommended that I see Dr. Ed Washabaugh, III at Michigan Pain Specialists in Ann Arbor and while I was leery at first. In retrospect having dealt with those places before and not having a good experience I was doubtful but he said I would like Ed. (At this point I should have listed to my doubts and also the three doctors in my family who told me to STAY AWAY from pain clinics. Of course I did not and I went to see him and he was indeed a horse of a different color when it comes to pain docs at least on first impressions! If you need a pain specialist I highly recommend asking people & doctors that you know FIRST!!! He acted very empathetic and offered three different proposals to get me to a point of less pain, what I did not want to believe was that he would (as my family docs told me) also take away all three by the time he was through. What he really wanted me to do was to switch off all of the meds I was on and go on some sort of pain patch which I thought was ridiculous! Again the 3 family docs told me that was insane as I did not need to go on a huge amount of constant meds when there were lots of times that I did not need any meds. All three docs told me that they only use those patches for critical and or final day patients. I also found out that these patches can make someone addicted very easily. No thanks!

     June and the Michigan Challenge balloonfest comes along which many of you know I am very involved in. Just as we are getting close, the worst knee, the left blows out and surgery 2 weeks prior to the fest. Yikes! The fest was awesome as usual and then 3 days after the fest hand surgery with Dr. Ray Noellert (who is absolutely PHENOMENAL!~~ I highly recommend him) which I hope except for the spine I hope to be the last of the surgeries related to Lee Michael Mayville running the red light and slamming into me 4.5 years ago. A week after the hand surgery Ed had to do a nasty spine procedure which thankfully I was knocked out for. Sadly that made the spine worse rather than better, absolutely no matter WHO recommends them, NO more pain clinics!!!!

     Typing with one finger is a disaster and a left handed mouse!!!! Yikes!! I know I tried to beat the world record of 3 surgeries in 11 weeks back in 2001, but to do 3 in 6 weeks this year, oh my!! I honestly did not know that I would make it through that horrific pain over the next 2 months! With the knee, hand & spine screaming all at once, whooeeeee that was something else. But in the end with a new primary doctor who got me all straight everything is finally looking up!

     All of the new stuff that I am cleaning up is over at my MARDOS Memorial Library www.MemorialLibrary.com When my neph taught me to make pages he never dreamed I would put 30,000 pages on line, so he just taught me the basics. I never learned the folder part of making pages, so now I am redoing all of www.LivGenMI.com so that it is organized properly. During the care of the 3 seniors God gave me to care for through their path with Alzheimer disease to escape & get a break I filmed 83 of the 90+ cemeteries and slowly I will get all of this stuff on line as soon as possible. That will involve totally redoing the cemetery section that will be called Burial and be divided by township & then cemetery. Eventually there will be an image of every stone through 1995 if it was in a cemetery when I filmed.

     In August and I continued to move data over to the Memorial Library and am down to only 5800 pages to get cleaned up. Yippee!!! Finally got to start my p.t. again, 8 months after I stopped for the wedding, ankle, knee & hand. Oh man my muscles are going to be sore tomorrow <g> but I am determined to get back to my daily routine so if you write and I do not respond immediately I may be on one of the various torture machines I have here from treadmills to ab lounge, the newest gut reducer <g> If we do not keep our bodies tuned that can lead to lots of other problems and I have had enough of those so I will try this method.

     Well Christmas & the holidays passed and I continued to add more data including some great additions for the MML. I even tackled the back room which will eventually become my new gym AFTER I get rid of all the stuff from the 3 estates that dropped on me. I sold tons on ebay and can actually walk back there. Yippee!!! Now spring has finally sprung but sadly we really did not get winter that I am sure a lot were happy about but I LOVE snow!!

     Of course spring comes and my hubby who I am sure has Paul Bunyan genes comes alive! <g> He just loves to cut down trees, thankfully we live in a forest. So between stacking, chipping etc. it can be nuts. Finally it feels GREAT to be able to do things. Some days I look like something escaped from Dr. Frankenstein's lab with 8 TENS pads all over me, but hey I am alive!

     That summer went fine between Balloonfest & other projects like filming more cemeteries etc. and we are close to being done. Phew I will be glad when that section of the site is done. Fall was uninteresting except for of course the 23rd annual Fantasy of Lights when I was going to be able to drive a classic car that hubby had restored for me. Everything that could go wrong did, (gee what is new?) anyway there went that dream. :(((

     Now it is February and we are very excited as the entire family is to be meeting out in Salt Lake City for a delayed Christmas and a family trip to Yellowstone and snowmobiling. This was something I had never tried before and in respect probably again,.... I should have listened. It was a blast to have all 10 of us together as we climbed into two SUV's for the 5 hour trip up to Yellowstone. We stayed at the Mammoth Inn which was the first building built in the park. The next morning we loaded into a bus to take us up to the sled area. Some of us were two to a sled and others like me were on our own. Hubby has degenerative hip disease so I could not sit behind him as the pain would be difficult. I drove fine for about half the way to Old Faithful which was 60+ miles away. Then as the sun came over the mountains, I was actually blinded being I only have one good eye due to the idiot that ran the red light & caused me to be handicapped both physically & visually. I was stuck so my niece offered to drive my sled which was great. She drove right into the parking lot for Old Faithful and then the fickle finger of fate struck again! We really do not know what happened but as she was turning the sled into the snowmobile parking lot suddenly the sled was flipping over and my head hit the ground and then it was crawling up my leg and ended up hanging over us at a 2:00 position. Poor Mari was hanging by her foot 5 feet in the air!

     Yikes! Thankfully Donnie & her hubby Marc ran to the rescue and grabbed on to the sled so it would not fall & crush Mari. They got her down and then the rangers were there to lift the sled off of my leg which was absolutely screaming. They told me that it probably was not broken because I could put weight on it but I knew better as I had felt that pain before! Yikes this definitely hurt. Thankfully due to other medical situations I had meds to help take the pain away. We were able to stay through the next day even though I was far from my best and then we headed home. The park is absolutely phenomenal and I think everyone should be able to see it themselves. Our guides were great and very helpful with my newest ailments. I always travel with braces etc,. just in case.:((( On the way home we were almost in the middle of a horrific car wreck. It was blinding snow in Idaho and while we never heard how many were hurt but we were sure several died. Sadly one was a nurse who just tried to help and ended up being run over.

     We got back to Layton UT and they x-rayed the leg & foot and did not seem to think there were breaks but I just ignored it and as soon as we got back to Howell I saw my doctor and she ordered another full set of films at the end of the week. I guess typical of my luck these guys did not see anything either. At week three I was dying in pain so I called my trusty orthopedic surgeon Dr. John K. Anderson. I went to see him and he took more films and then he ran his fingers over my foot and I screamed and he looked at the film and said yup, 4th metatarsal bone broken. Same thing for the leg and it ended up being the fibula that was broken. I asked him if he would cast them and he said, no, they were already set but they were going to hurt like hell! He did not lie....

     Finally through the summer & now into August it has stopped hurting to the point that I can get back to the p.t. that I have missed all these months. I really needed to get back at that. It will probably hurt tomorrow but I did a full routine today. I have totally cleaned out my office and have already gotten back to updated some of the horrific pages I made almost 10 years ago on LivGenMI. It feels so good to be back at work. I hope some of the stuff I am adding for you will be of some help for your research!

    I did note that more are asking about my dear friend Jan Cortez and her cohorts...her page is over 28,000 hits. I guess people are beginning to realize that no one owns a state there are other places to add data! I had one historical society who wanted to make a page but well they were not on her preferred list so they will be joining another project I suspect. Well on to the next chapter...see you again.

     2008 started as usual with more medical mayhem...which I believe is my middle name! I went to get blood drawn and the phlebotomist evidently did not know what she was doing and hit a nerve instead of the vein and ended up causing something called DeQuervin's tendonitis. After multiple trips to see my dear friend Dr. Ray Noellert and multiple treatments & casts, he ended up having to do surgery and then more casts and more p.t. I am not going to ask if this ever ends, that would be like asking for more trouble. Do not need that! Took several trips during the year which is unusual for us, but several things happened all in about 3 months. St. Paul's LCMS church celebrated its 100th birthday out in Wauneta NE (Chase/Dundy County, NE) and of course we had to go since Don's Great Grandfather was one of the founding members. It was wonderful and Don said he saw more people he knew than in the last 40 years. Our nephew got married down in FL so we drove down there and I determined that even though of the two of us I am the one who loves it to be very warm, that is TOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO warm!!! Everyone kept saying but this is just spring, wait until summer....no thanks! I am headed back to MI. I did though get to see Don's 2 elderly 1st cousins (Don's Dad's eldest sister's daughters) One is 85 and has a hard time walking and the other is 77 and has some problems too. We offered help whenever they needed us. I also showed them photos of their Mom that I had on my laptop from Germany and they were thrilled! They had never seen those photos.

I also got to finally meet my long time dear friend Ginger who is the President of USGN. That was WONDERFUL!!! Don & her hubby Steve disappeared shortly after we got there to talk ":engines"! <g> No sooner did we get back when we flew out to Salt Lake to see our newest Great Niece Scarlett Kay Luce who was only a few months old when we were there! Now she is due to get a brother next February and we cannot wait. From there we drove to Bruneau ID for a family wedding.

On the way back we got to see another nephew & his family. We were sooooooooooo proud to see both of their daughters in ROTC at high school and they both received numerous awards. One will for sure enter the Navy when she is through college. Later that year brought on one of the largest scares of my life. My dear dear sister in law Marilyn whom I love dearly became critically ill and ended up being on life support for almost 2 months. Her spleen had burst and sent nasty stuff throughout her body and she will have to deal with that for the rest of her life. She was finally able to come home the day before Christmas and we went up there for a few days. She tires very easily and has to have cat scans of her body once every 6 months so they can be sure nothing has happened in that time but she is alive so I am thrilled!

2009 brought on more medical mayhem and it was finally determined that I must get all my cemeteries filmed as John says my knees & he have a date! I busted my butt filming every day that it was not pouring and now going into 2010 I have only 4 cems left to film every stone in; 2 that have only 4-6 stones, 1 that has 9 stones and a HUGE one in downtown Pinckney with I dunno 20,000 stones???? I was of course also busy with the Michigan Challenge Balloonfest and it was a bittersweet year as I officially retired after 25 years being in charge of the balloon pilots. I will miss it terribly but just could not do it justice with so many other projects that I was working on. I will I am sure have the friendship of all the pilots I tried my best to care for and make their experience here in Howell the best it could be. I am sure I have made many life friends. I am still of course still busy with the Fantasy of Lights Christmas Parade in Howell. Cannot believe that this year will be the 27th annual event! When Sally Witt, Mike Hagman and myself started it we could not even get one band who would march in the cold and now we have 6 in the parade. If you are within driving time of Howell please try to come out this year (always the Friday after Thanksgiving. Parade starts at 7p but it is best to be there by 5 as the traffic & parking get nuts!) To see maps, photos etc. go to www.FantasyOfLights.info Santa will be waiting! You can see me driving my 36 Ford Jezebel.

Well on to 2010 and we will see what new happens...I am sure it will be exciting! Little did I know HOW exciting it would be and sadly scary to the very bone! As every woman knows each year we SHOULD get our mammos. I went in to St. Joseph Mercy Woodland Hospital and did the deed hoping that they had a test that would cause as much grief for the other sex <g>. Then suddenly 2 months later I got a letter that said I had to go back for what was called a re-do. Sadly with cancer all over my family, my Dad died of colon cancer at age 44, lost two grandparents to forms of cancer, 5 great aunts & uncles to the dreaded disease and my sister had a rare form of cancer for almost a decade but now finally has been told she is in remission! Praise the Lord!

I went in for the test on the appointed day and when I saw the tech looking closely at the images I walked up behind her and asked if that was the cancer? She got very stressed & upset and said ummmm,,,,yes..So I called my dear friend Dr. W. B. Anderson who had saved my life a number of times during about 20 surgeries. He said you go see Tony Bozaan as I mentored him for 5 years and he will get you through this! I made an appointment with him and found him to be exactly what "Andy" had told me.....Wonderful!

One VERY important message is that please make sure that you go in for a DIGITAL imaging!!! They can catch the cancers as little as 2 cm. and that can save your life!!!! The old fashioned ones do not come close! Another thought, do NOT wait....I had considered waiting until the fall to finish my cemetery projects and later I found out that if I had, I would have been dead!

Tony & I talked and while I was more prone for an open biopsy he felt that something called a "Stereotactic Core Biopsy" and while I was leery I set up an appointment. WARNING!!! (This is GRAPHIC) If you are told to have this test, the best I can suggest is that you either get drugged for about 4 weeks so you do not remember what happened or have them put you in a coma for that length of time! Mind you I have been through hell & back with various medical tests but this surpasses ANYTHING I have ever been through!!! I went in on the morning of the test and they put me on a form of an ironing board with a hole in it. My right breast was put into the hole and the attendant told me that I could not talk or move as it would cause the test to be inaccurate. Then this tech came in and i was suddenly raised up and she started to attack my breast! I have had many shots in various parts of my body and they have always sprayed the area before shooting needles into that area. I asked repeatedly for something like that and they said oh, they did not do that! I was in absolute AGONY!!!! I knew there to be two areas they were concerned about so when they said they would use some sort of an instrument to take a "tube" of flesh out of those areas. I counted about 13 tubes of flesh in their tray when they were done. I almost passed out from the pain. The best way I can describe this was someone shooting a miniature 357 magnum but instead of shooting ammo it shot tiny slinkies with all the edges being razor blades. I was told by an inside source that the tech had missed the mark and thus more specimens that normal. I then was taken back where they put some sort of a patch on the area which later caused multiple areas of skin to peel off. I repeatedly asked if they were going to give me a script for pain meds and they told me to contact my general doctor. I told them no, she was not responsible for the pain so why would I get meds from her. In the end I saw 3 doctors in the next few weeks and they were totally appalled!!! My neurologist said he would have to apologize to his wife's friend because she said how bad this test was and he thought it was no big deal. He was appalled to see my very badly bruised breast with the patches of skin peeled off. My regular doctor was also horrified to see what I was left with. I will warn EVERY WOMAN NOT TO HAVE THIS TEST UNLESS THEY HAVE A VERY HIGH PAIN THRESHOLD!!!

After that test it was determined that I had one area that was for sure cancer although in an early form and another area that they did not know what it was. I went back to see Tony and we went over the test results and I had also faxed the report to my nephew who is a doctor. Marcus told me he was not sure what this other area was but he did not like it. That made me not like it. I talked to Tony again and he wanted an MRI of both breasts. I had that done and then got a cd of the test and saw the cancer. When I met for 2 hours with Tony he gave me 3 options, the first being 2 lumpectomies, the 2nd being the right mastectomy and the final bilateral mastectomies. The first two included radiation & chemo and the 3rd only if the lymphectomy showed that the cancer had spread.

Even with dozens & dozens of surgeries this one really set me back and scared the crap right out of me. You are losing parts of your body that will not come back. 21 June 2010 I went through the bilateral mastectomies and spent 5 days in the hospital. The last day Tony came in and had brought with him the path report from the lymphectomy. He said slowly to me that he did not know how I had the strength to do what I did as he thought that I would at the very most go through option 1 or maybe #2. He was stunned when I chose the final one, but I thought who in earth would want to go through this twice? No me that is for sure. He said that the tissue samples showed that the thing that they did not know what it was before the surgery turned out to be a VERY Viral & Rare form of cancer and if I had waited as little as 4 months, certainly no more than 6 months I would not be here.

Now I have dealt with Tony's choice for the plastic surgeon Dan Sherick who I will not comment until I am through with his care. I had to go through an emergency surgery 4 days after I got out of the hospital as a lot of the skin had turned necrotic and had to be removed immediately. Through all of this the pain has been nothing short of horrific! Sadly a lot of doctors do not understand that people with low pain thresholds just cannot tolerate pain and seem to think the patient is lying. The reconstruction was started during the initial surgery and then over about 6 weeks the tissue expanders that were implanted and then were inflated with saline. Now I am in the "cooking" phase and the next surgery will be 6 December. It should have been sooner but due to a paperwork problem that did not happen. They will remove the tissue expanders and put in the permanent implants which fit into a pouch that was created in between the two major muscles of a woman's chest. There will be another surgery about 3 months after this one and at this date I do not know when that will happen.

One funny side note.....I asked my nephew the doctor as to what should I choose? They had offered me either saline or silicone implants (not to worry the new silicone implants are solid, much like jello cubes with no liquid any longer) he said quickly, oh get silicone! You will go from droopy to perky and that I did! I would also recommend having the reconstruction immediately. The mental horror that a woman goes through with this surgery cannot be described. I was in tears a lot of the time, but once I saw my chest growing much like reliving puberty, that pain went away. Granted they do not look like to ones we women are born with but mentally it does wonders for you.

As a result so goes my plans to finish the cemetery project. I wish it would not happen but I firmly believe that God has a plan for all of us and for whatever reason we are being prepared for our future path.

Thank you for all the prayers and messages....they keep me going.  Pam

.....to be continued

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