Almost one year ago – 8 August was my last entry, and this is 28 July – we were messing with, dealing with a new old RV.  It’s still sitting in the driveway, or rather I should say back in the driveway.  But, let me start back then.

Last year around end of May we pretty much finished doing the repairs on the house, getting it prepared to go on the market and about July time frame we did so.  The RV was moved to a friend’s place for storage, we moved out of the house and the Realtor we’d hired came in and argued with us to drop the price, stage the house, and to drop the price.  But, I said that didn’t I?  So did she, over and over and over and over and over.

Long story short on that, she didn’t see eye to eye with my wife and I on things.  We KNOW the house is worth more than what she was trying to force us to drop the price down to.  She wanted it staged, we didn’t, but we thought “Ok, why not”.  So she brought someone in, then wanted to charge us for the staging.  We refused to pay for it.  Wanted the house simple, empty and easy for people to examine.  She wanted it cluttered with crap.

The Realtor ended up paying for the staging.  We didn’t.  Along about October, as Fate would have it, the lack of an understanding between the parties caused us all to part ways.  JoAnne and I moved back into the house with almost no furnishing.  The Realtor vacated the contact.

In November, we hired another Realtor – and I won’t post any of their names here; but when the job is done, I’ll name names. 🙂

November, December and January brought more people in the first two  weeks than we had the WHOLE three months with the first Realtor.  Amazingly enough, there were ZERO complaints about the house (when ALL we got were complaints from the first few people that looked at it with the first lady).  We believe the first one wanted us to just sell to someone who couldn’t really afford the house (hence the constant browbeating about dropping the price even below the appraised value)!

Then January came along.

JoAnne felt ill a few times, went home from work early a few times – something she NEVER does – and finally toward the end of the month she was beginning to be tired, having all sorts of strange problems so she went to the doctor.  Our doctor saw her, then told her something wasn’t right.  She sent her early next morning for CT Scan across town.  On Wednesday evening, 29 January 2014, Doctor Robison called to tell us the bad news.  Cancer.  Ovarian.  We were sitting at our normal “watering hole” with some of the family, as it was my youngest son’s 28th birthday and we had bought him a beer.

It was devastating.  Completely.  Cancer?  Not her.  Not my sweetheart.  And yet, it was true.

In February she had surgery, but not before she got sick, her kidneys shut down and we almost lost her from that, her blood pressure dropped dangerously low more than once and she stopped working and went on medical leave for the time being.  The tumor was huge – bigger than a grapefruit.  They took out a lot of parts, including lymph nodes, lots of them.

The good news was the tumor was not completely cancerous, only a small portion from the way the doctor explained it.  And the better news was that it had not spread any further, lymph nodes were clean.  The bad news was it was at “Stage IIc or IIIa”.  The doctor couldn’t really give us a good staging.  We think we went with worst case – because, you know, doctors don’t like to be sued for giving the truth… but that’s another story I guess.

She has since had a port installed for the chemo, undergone 6 chemo sessions, each 21 days apart, lost all of her hair, we’ve both cried a lot and held each other a lot, the kids have been visibly upset, scared and just worried.

On 11 July 2014 at about 2:30 PM the last chemo was finished.   She’d had a doctor’s appointment just prior (day before).  Her CA-125 tests have been pretty low (11 or so) consistently.  On 4 August she has a CT scan – to do, we suppose, a baseline check afterward and for future reference.  Ever few months a CA-125 test will be done.  And she has to make a decision whether she wants her port removed (every few weeks she has to go in to have it flushed).

She’s leaning toward having it removed because frankly it’s a pain in the ass to have to keep going back to have it punctured (along with her skin) and flushed and it was a 20 minute surgery to put it in.  She will probably decide that sometime prior to October.  In October she will have enough information to decide whether we will put the house back on the market.

In the meantime, she’s diligently searching for a boat to carry us around the world.  After we pay all the bills. And maybe sell the house.