Thusday, September 13, 2012 - Change of plans

It's funny, but looking back I didn't have in mind for me the year as it's worked out so far. I was turning 60, I knew that. It was the year of the Dragon and when you turn 60 in the year of the Dragon it's supposed to be a really good year for you. We started out great with our Big Year. We were having terrific fun learning about and finding so many incredible birds and they were all around us. I could see us having a great time all year pursueing our feathered buddies. But things don't always go as planned. It started out slowly in January when I had to have a root canal and crown. Normally that's not such a big deal but there were problems and it lasted much longer than it should have. From that I got a sinus infection that has not gone away to date and then because that wore me down I went through a series of urinary tract infections. Those first few months were not going well. I was also having considerable pain in my knee from my arthritis and it had kept me from doing as much hiking and birding as I would have liked, but I was pushing through it. Just before my trip to Peru I lost a tooth and had another crown put on-that went fine and my trip to Peru in April was a great time. But upon my return after checking out the fuzziness in my right eye I find out I had a hole in my retina that was definitely affecting my sight. Not what I had planned for a birding year! I had the surgery to correct this done at the end of June and it took a couple months of recovery before I could really use both eyes through my binocs. I was just about ready to see if I could possibly go in for knee replacement when I got sidelined by other news. On this day in September I got the news that I had breast cancer. Out of the blue, yes, very unexpected. OK another bump in the road of life. I will deal with it.