Finally - an update!

Hello my loyal readers. Please accept my apologies for the lack of communication. Just haven't felt much like writing anything lately I guess. Still no job, so nothing to write about there.

Mom's doing okay. She's got one more chemotherapy treatment left and then they will do some scans to see what remains of the tumor on her liver. Depending on the size (they're expecting it to be very, very small since the last scan showed it was shrinking) they have a couple of options for the next step.

They can either do surgery and remove that part of the liver or they can do a radio wave ablation, which basically means they put a needle through the skin, into the liver and they send high frequency radio waves into the tumor, essentially cooking whatever is left of it. The surgery would mean another week or so trip to the hospital and the normal possible complications with a surgery. With the ablation you generally don't even have to stay at the hospital overnight and it has a good success rate, so that's what we're hoping for and what the doctor is expecting to do at this point. So, that is basically all good news.

I am flying to Dallas on Wed., Sept. 5 for a few days of visiting for the wedding of one of my oldest, dearest friends. I'm excited about getting to be back in Big D for a little while. When I was growing up, my family would frequently vacation in Ohio so we could visit with our extended family. We lived in Dallas and everybody else lived in Ohio. Needless to say, our vacations were basically like being drawn and quartered. We had x number of family members trying to drag us in x number of directions. I've found that this is going to be how it is when I return to Dallas from now on. It is still two weeks until I come down there and I've already got a burgeoning schedule. It's all good though - I absolutely want to see as many old friends as possible. I miss everybody tremendously.

My brother is moving up here to Ohio in the middle of September. A few days after I return from Dallas, my mom and dad are flying down there to finish packing up his stuff and they are renting a u-haul to drive his belongings up here. I think it'll be good to have him here. I'm looking forward to having someone a little closer to my age around. My brother is five years younger than I am and we've never been especially close (not that we didn't like each other - just never had much in common), but in the past few years it seems that we have been getting closer and close, which is a good thing. He's also bringing his miniature pincher, Bowser, who is awesome, so I'm looking forward to that as well.

Well, that's really about all I've got at this point. Hopefully I'll do a better job at keeping everyone updated in the future. Thanks as always for reading. Hope this blog finds everyone doing well!

- C