And then....

As I look at my last post, I see how naive I was. One minute I was a traveling fool, the next minute... tragedy emerges. After intuitively knowing my husband was sick, there was no more ignoring it. He has cancer. The next few months my life was thrown into a cauldron of emotions and trauma.

I had just come from a vacation in Florida where I was painting with my friends. We were laughing and carefree. At that time, I had an intuition that Glenn was sick. I had been trying to get him to a doctor for at least three years. I had related this to my friends at the time. It was abstract. I couldn't imagine what would happen next.

When I got home, after Glenn had gone to the doctors for what they thought was an average UTI, they discovered that he had a tumor in his bladder and they wanted to take care of it ASAP. This begins one of the most traumatic times of our lives.

As he goes into his surgery to remove this tumor, a one day, outpatient event, we begin our journey into the world of cancer. A place I never thought I would go.

When they remove the tumor with none surgical procedure, they discover that he has a bigger tumor in his colon. This is the original tumor that has grown into his bladder, spread to his abdomen and has created 3 inch legions in his liver. A death sentence. This tumor in his colon has burst through into his bladder and causes a fistula. It is a door from his colon into his bladder. Bad news. The colon is filled with bacteria and can not get into his bladder, and if the surgeons let this go, he would be dead in hours. So he has to have another surgery to close off the colon and they had to put on a colostomy bag.

This wasn't so bad in it's self , but what he went through in the next two years was hell on earth.

He passed away September 9, 2020. It was the worse year you could ever imagine. He was told he had a month to live and managed to go 19 months more. My Dad passed away that December. After moving into my house for only 3 hours, he decided that he was going to "croak here or in the hospital". He was right. We sent him to the hospital and he died the next day. That year I lost 3 friends, a cousin, my godfather, my husband and my father. Everything in my house seemed break or expire during that year as well. And lets not forget the pandemic. So I guess 2018 was my gift from God to get through the next three years.