Anniversaries ahead...

It's October.

I was born under an October moon 38 years ago this month. My birthday is two weeks away. Two weeks after that is the day that otherwise changed my life.

November 4, 2007 will be a year that I discovered the lump that altered the course of my life and my family's lives. 45 days after that (December 19) marks the year anniversary of my diagnosis of Renal Cell and Hodgkin's.

I'm not sure what I should do on these days. Celebrate? Take a long walk in the woods and take stock of my life since my diagnosis? Sit under a tree and think about life and the universe? Sleep? Do nothing and treat these days like any other?

It's been a long strange year. The cancer is gone. I should be getting my first "check up" CT scan this month. And while it's been a long, hard year -it's far from over. Unfortunately for the last couple of years the fourth quarter has been a struggle for us, for one reason or another.

And this year will be no different.

We are in mortgage freefall, since my diagnosis we have been in a hole and we are not getting out of it with the house in tact. That said we are in search of a new place to live...credit is severely damaged, medical bills are HUGE and complicating our lives everyday.

Our house has been on the market since March...no bites.

Recently Dawn added up my bills just from my Oncologist. 6 months of chemo cost $104,000.00. Yes just my Oncologist was $104 thousand dollars.

That doesn't include scans (which run about $5000.00 a piece), labs, biopsy surgeries, ($9000.00 to insert port-a-catheter last Feb) etc, etc. And don't forget my Kidney surgery cost $42,000.00 for two days in the hospital.

So even though my "you've got cancer" anniversaries of are worth marking in positive ways because I am still here...I am bracing for the legal crap to hit us hard before Christmas. It's what happens when life takes a dump on you.

We're thinking this house has a dark cloud above it. Once we are free of this place life has to get better.

I'll let you know.

Until then...I'll be posting again soon.