I just now am able to post an entry concerning Chelle –

She is sore from the double mastectomy and wants the drain tubes gone. Her arms are sore and she can’t lift anything heavier than 5 pounds. They used staples (60) and because of the portable catheter that’s in her chest, he wasn’t able to line the incisions up level to each other. I don’t know if that will make a difference during reconstruction or not.

We visited with her oncologist on Thursday and he did let us know that this is way more serious than first believed. Having 34 out of 34 lymph nodes test positive definitely means that the cancer will most likely occur again at some point. From what I hear, metastizing into bone cancer is most common. The way he referred to is was it will be “chronic cancer”

He is beginning two more chemo drugs; one is an implant under the skin that releases a drug for three months and another in a pill form for 3 months. She begins radiation next month; it’s a 28-day regiment, Monday through Friday.

Without the chemo and doing the radiation only, her oncologist said she would not survive 2 years. He didn’t say what the survival rate is with the chemo. She has estrogen fed cancer, so I asked about taking out her ovaries. He said at the moment, she is too fragile, but it’s a possibility and we can discuss that again in 3 months.

Hmm…hope that’s not too late.

After the radiation is over and after making sure there is no ongoing inflammation, they are going to try again for her insurance to authorize a PET scan. Evidently, that shows up any inflammatory tissue or unwanted cells. Her insurance denied the last request.

She’s in good spirits and plans on going back to work next month, the week after she begins the radiation. She wants to know how it will affect her before she tries to return to work. She was a supervisor at the county detention center before – aka a jailer – and now they have created a new position for her as the new employee trainer. She will have very little contact with the inmates (because of the infection and injury risks) and can make her own hours, depending on her strength.

Her hair is growing back in with lots of gray hairs and is now curly. She can almost spike it with enough gel. One of the unwanted side effects of chemo is weight gain. Believe it or not. They add lots of steroid compounds to counter the side effects of the chemo; such as nausea, vomiting, headaches – all that…and that drives her nuts, she’s gained some weight and she is unhappy with the way she looks.

I drag her out and make her go to restaurants and shopping with me. She needs the stay positive.  We went out shopping and then last night I drug (dragged?) her out to help out the Red Cross serve meals.

Now…about me…

Ealier this week, my youngest daughter signed her church up to provide a meal on Friday night to serve to the displaced people (due to our weather) who are still staying at the church that the Red Cross has designated as the county shelter. Chelle and I went and helped serve the food and it nearly broke my heart. One of the the areas (I live in an area of this one) that was among the hardest hit was more of the older/low income area. The that were affected are people who are spending their money on getting their houses back in order instead of buying food and clothes. Some of their houses are beyond repair and most of these people live on fixed incomes. I don’t know how they’ll survive until the FEMA money comes in.

We have been drenched, drowned and inundated with rain. We’ve had more rain so far this year than we’ve had in the last two years, and this year is barely half way over. There is not a dry spot to be found. Everywhere you go, the ground has about 3 inches of water just sitting there.

What happened to my area was that last Tuesday night, my sub-development got flooded and was declared a disaster area when some floodgates at a lake to the north of us were opened. About 30 homes were destroyed and we had many people who had to be rescued. The water rose so fast that most people had to cut a hole in the roof to escape. Some climbed trees; some used their own boats to get out.  The water levels got so high (and fast) that the electric company had to cut the power off because the water was reaching the electrical pole breakers.

I live higher up than the area affected and have no real damage; but I still have my own minor set of problems. I get the runoff water from the homes even higher than me, so when it rains (and it seems to all the time), my yards (back and front) are flooded almost constantly. That means about 10” of water most of the time.

I have my outside kitties set up with recliner lounge chairs under large umbrellas so the can stay up off of the wet ground and stay fairly dry. So far they have not floated away (The loungers and umbrellas). The kitties evidently go up into a crawl space under my house to avoid the water. I cannot convince them to go into Hubby’s metal shop/garage/barn in order to avoid the water. I have too many kittens to corral if I were to be evacuated and some are not tame enough to catch anyway.

The flies and mosquitoes are horrendous.

Two of my momma cats have died and the bodies are somewhere under my house (I’m assuming complications of kittenbirth, but could be something else) and the smell is compounding the miserability (I know that’s not a real word, but it fits,) of being outside.

With so much water standing around and not knowing what’s in it (everyone around here has septic tanks, not the city sewers system.) makes me not want to crawl around and see where they are and remove them.

One a good note, Hubby works for an electrical co-op that makes and sells electricity to local electrical companies (like the people you get your bill from) and the demand is exceeding supply, plus the water has cause some extra problems, so he is putting in lots of OT. That will come in handy next week when….

TA-DA....... 

Baby Jack and his mother (my oldest) come to VISIT!!!!!!!! We pick them up Wed, the 4^th at the airport…. then it’s on to the mountains of New Mexico for a week…. Carlsbad Caverns...horse racing…casinos…. hiking….tickling....laughing...I can't wait. 

We haven’t seen either of them since October, so we are really excited.

On a different note....

My youngest daughter’s company is having a big 4^th of July bash. It’s a small company with big clients, so they throw a big bash as a thank you for their workers. So, coinciding with their arrival will be lots of food, fireworks and music. Jack should be impressed.

It’s raining again, and that makes me sleepy…so more when time allows. 

Thanks for the prayers....keep 'em coming!

xoxo

 

 

Just a short entry to say that my little sister, Chelle, had a double mastectomy on Tuesday, June 19^th and is doing well. She’s home and getting around fine.

The pathology reports concerning the state of the tumor or any if the lymph node glands are cancerous are not back yet, so we don’t know if she’ll need radiation or not yet.

I can email any of you the ‘post-surgical’ picture if ya'll need a reminder to do a self-breast exam more often.

---

Update~

The surgeon removed 34 lymph nodes from the underarm area (on the side the breast cancer was) and all of the nodes are positive for cancer.

The doctors are forming a new game plan even as I type, but I'm assuming there'll be more chemo and also radiation.

All prayers are welcomed.

I got an email with this thought in it and deemed to be most profound:

God determines who walks into your life....it's up to you to
decide who you let walk away, who you let stay, and who you refuse to let go.

More to come when I've got more time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not to get too personal or XXX rated, but most people know that if you’ve been ‘with someone’ for more than a few years, you might try different things in order to spice up your ‘bedroom activities’. Ah, heck...who doesn't experiment?

It could be anything from a visit to Victoria’s Secret, a can of whipped cream to…well, I don’t know what. Something I have yet to think of, (or want to attempt) I’m sure.

Background info:

My cat, Talullah (the one that obviously runs too fast for Hubby to get the door closed behind him before she bolts into the great outdoors. And on the day that she’s to be ‘fixed’, so of course, she’s in heat) - (anyway)…she had 2 kittens under my bed a few weeks ago. She has recently moved them to the bottom of a bedside nightstand. This table has doors that are just too much trouble to use them on a regular basis, so they’ve been shut for years now. I don’t know how she got the doors open, but I let her keep her kitties in there because it’s out of the way and safe. Lola loves kittens, but she just plays too rough.

Anyway,  

Tonight, The Princess was sitting on the floor, in front of the nightstand, with the doors open watching the kittens. The next thing I know, she has discovered some of those ‘experimental bedroom things’ that we evidently tried, didn’t like and subsequently put away.

These items are innocent in their own right, so she didn’t find anything she hasn’t seen before. And she would have no reason to suspect any alternative use for said items. In fact, you’d have to have some imagination to figure out their unintended usage.

I couldn’t tell you how long they’ve been in that nightstand, but it’s been some time because I totally forgot they were there. Shows you what a good housekeeper I am, huh?

I guess if I were a better housekeeper, things like this wouldn’t happen, but then again, I hear things about other family members that I don’t necessarily need to know, so I guess what goes around really does come around.

Here in lies the problem…I know it won’t be too long before The Princess will be sitting with her mom and dad, (or some other person I know), watching an innocent TV show and these particular items will appear and she’ll say in a loud, clear voice….

”Mammie and PawPaw have some of those in the table right next to their bed!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Information to know when it comes to defending American's involvement in the Iraqi war, the freedom of people in the Iraq war and our President's decesions.

Just for the record...

 

Do you know any soldier who thinks he's there for all the wrong reasons? Any soldier who doesn't want to go back when he can? Any soldier who disrespects the President?

 

America may not be perfect, but for most, it's the best country on earth!  

 

Some of this was taken from Emails I've received and expounded on.

 

---

 1941~

Sixty-three years ago, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.

At that time, the US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood, and most Americans wanted nothing to do with the European or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and in outraged Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day, we declared war on Germany, which had not yet attacked us.

It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

 

France was not an ally, as the Vichy government of France quickly aligned itself with its German occupiers.

Germany was certainly not an ally, as Hitler was intent on setting up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, as it was well on its way to owning and controlling all of Asia.

 

Together, Japan and Germany had long-range plans of invading Canada and Mexico, as launching pads to get into the United States over our northern and southern borders, after they finished gaining control of Asia and Europe. America's only allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia. That was about it.

All of Europe, from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the East, was already under the Nazi heel.

 

America was certainly not prepared for war. America had drastically downgraded most of its military forces after WWI and throughout the depression, so much so that at the outbreak of WWII, army units were training with broomsticks because they didn't have guns Cars had the word "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have real tanks. And a huge chunk of our naval force had just been sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.

 

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England, that was actually the property of Belgium, given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler (a little known fact).

 

Actually, Belgium surrendered in one sindgle day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day just to prove they could. Britain had already been holding out for two years in the face of staggering losses and the near decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later, and first turning his attention to Russia, at a time when England was on the verge of collapse, in the late summer of 1940.

 

Ironically, Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years, until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

 

Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow alone... 90% of them from cold and starvation, most were civilians, but also more than a 1,000,000 were soldiers. Had Russia surrendered, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire war effort against the Brits, then America. And the Nazis could have quite possibly won the war.

 

All of this is to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And now, we find ourselves at another one of those key moments in history.

 

 

 

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East -- for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation, but it is not known yet which will win -- the Inquisitors, or the Reformationists.

 

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, the OPEC oil, and the US, European, and Asian economies. The techno-industrial economies will be at the mercy of OPEC -- not an OPEC dominated by the educated, rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.

 

You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions, and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

 

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, (the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda and the Islamic terrorist movements).

We have to do it somewhere. And we can't do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle at a time and place of our choosing........in Iraq.

Not in New York, not in London, or Paris or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we are doing two important things.

 

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist. Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq. We have focused the battle. We are killing bad people, and the ones we get there we won't have to get here. We also have a good chance to creat a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East, and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

 

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928.

It did not begin with Pearl Harbor. It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 -- a 17 year war -- and was followed by another decade of US occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again .. a 27 year war.

 

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP -- adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars. W.W.II cost America more than 400,000 killed in action, and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.  Do you think stopping Hitler was worth it?

 

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $160 billion,which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost about 3,000 American lives, which is roughly 100% of the 3,000 lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11. But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater -- a world dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

 

This is not 60 minute TV shows, and 2 hour movies in which everything comes out okay. The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain, and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been, and probably always will be.

The bottom line is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It is not being taught in American schools, it's being downplayed in the media and it asolutely will not go away if we ignore it.

 

 

If the US can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq, then we have an "England" in the Middle East, a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East. The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never ending war. And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless somebody prevents them.

 

We have four options:

1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as this year), if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is)

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now, in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

4. Or, we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe. It will, of course, be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier.

 

If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

Remember, perspective is everything, and America's schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany.

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still has troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.

 

The US has taken more than 3,000 killed in action in Iraq. The US took more than 4,000 killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In W.W.II the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week -- for four years. Most of the individual battles of W.W.II lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

 

But the stakes are at least as high .. A world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic law).

It's difficult to understand why the American left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis.

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate here in America, where it's safe. Why don't we see Peace Activists demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places that really need peace activism the most?

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc.

Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

---

 

 

 

Our militay people think it ist. 

---

 

JOHN GLENN said~

Things that make you think a little: 
 
There were 39 combat related killings in Iraq in January.
 In the fair city of Detroit there were 35 murders in the month of January.

That's just one American city,  about as deadly as the entire war-torn country of Iraq 
 
When some claim that President Bush shouldn't have started this war, state the following:
 
a. FDR led us into World War II.

 

b.. Germany never attacked us; Japan did.
From 1941-1945, 450,000 lives were lost ...an average of 112,500 per year (9,375 per month) 

c. Truman finished that war and started one in Korea - North Korea never attacked us .. 
From 1950-1953, 55,000 lives were lost...an average of 18,334 per year (over 1,500 per month).
 
d John F. Kennedy started the Vietnam conflict in 1962. 
Vietnam never attacked us but Johnson turned Vietnam into a quagmire.
From 1965-1975, 58,000 lives were lost...an average of 5,800 per year (483 per month).
 
e. Clinton went to war in Bosnia without UN or French consent. 
Bosnia never attacked us . 

f. Clinton was offered Osama bin Laden's head on a platter three times by Sudan and did nothing. Osama has attacked us on multiple occasions.
 
g. In the years since terrorists attacked us, President Bush has liberated two countries, crushed the Taliban, crippled al-Qaida, put nuclear inspectors in Libya, Iran, and, North Korea without firing a shot,  and captured a terrorist who slaughtered 300,000 of his own people. 

The Democrats are complaining about how long the war is taking. 

But wait~

It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. 
That was a 51-day operation.
 
We've been looking for evidence for chemical weapons in Iraq for less time than it took Hillary Clinton to find
the Rose Law Firm billing records. 
 
It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard
than it took Ted Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sank at Chappaquiddick that killed his date.

It even took less time to take Iraq than it took
to count the votes in Florida !!!! 
 
Our Commander-In-Chief is doing a good job! 
The Military morale is high! The President's approval rating is the same level as Congress's ratings. No one ever tells you that, do they? The biased media hopes we are too ignorant to realize the facts.

 

Do you think that any conservative would have gotten away with what Dan Rather did?
 
But wait ~ there's more! 

JOHN GLENN (ON THE SENATE FLOOR) 
Mon, 26 Jan 2004 11:13:
 
Some people still don't understand why military personnel do what they do for a living. This exchange between
Senators John Glenn and Senator Howard Metzenbaum is worth reading. Not only is it a pretty impressive 
impromptu speech, but it's also a good example of one man's explanation of why men and women in the armed
services do what they do for a living.
 
This IS a typical, though sad, example of what some who have never served think of the military.
 
Senator Metzenbaum (speaking to Senator Glenn):
"How can you run for Senate when you've never held a real job?" 

From: Senator Glenn (D-Ohio):
"I served 23 years in the United States Marine Corps.
I served through two wars. 
I flew 149 missions. 
My plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire on 12 different occasions.
I was in the space program. 
It wasn't my checkbook, Howard; it was my life on the line. 
 
It was not a nine-to-five job, where I took time off to take the
daily cash receipts to the bank."
 
"I ask you to go with me ... as I went the other day...
to a veteran's hospital and look those men ... 
with their mangled bodies ... in the eye, 
and tell THEM they didn't hold a job! 
 
You go with me to the Space Program at NASA 
and go, as I have gone, to the widows and orphans 
of Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee...
and you look those kids in the eye and tell them
that their DADS didn't hold a job. 

You go with me on Memorial Day and you stand in
Arlington National Cemetery, where I have more friends 
buried than I'd like to remember, and you watch
those waving flags.
 
You stand there, and you think about this nation,
and you tell ME that those people didn't have a job? 
 
What about you?" 
 
For those who don't remember ...
During W.W.II, Howard Metzenbaum was an attorney
representing the Communist Party in the USA . 
AND now he's a Senator!

 

---

 
If you can read this, thank a teacher.
If you are reading it in English thank a Veteran.

And by the way, comments ARE welcomed. Please feel free to let me know your reasoning.

---

Your dear, sweet Mammie will be her same wonderful self again, soon.

xoxo