Here is some information that I have been posting on my Team in Training page (still taking donations by the way... click here )....
Nov. 30th Gil had his follow up appointment. Every looks pretty good, but he has an enlarged thyroid. His ultrasound was Thursday, Dec. 3rd and now we are waiting on the results from that. Many hopes and prayers that it is only scar tissue from the radiation. We should know by Tuesday!
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Nov. 16th went in for his CT scan. His follow up is Monday, Nov. 30th. We are very hopeful for a clean bill of health and the beginning of a 5th year of remission. I wonder if someday we will loose track of when his cancer was.
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Nov. 22nd, I did the 1st Women's magazine Women's 1/2 marathon in St. Petersburg. Although not the event I am raising money for, it was an event to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and there were several Team in Training participants. It was a great event. A little warm for November, but a nice venue around the waterfront and Old Northeast, St. Petersburg. I did manage to do at 13.1 miles in 2 hours and 14 minutes. Now, to get ready for Disney.
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We're still waiting for Gil to get his 'new' teeth. With the holidays fast approaching and money being tight, he's been holding off on going to the dentist. We will get there eventually. In the meantime, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has opened a grant to research post treatment quality of life. This is very exciting research - for us and, I'm sure, thousands of others!
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On Sept. 11th, Gil had oral surgery to have 7 teeth removed. He has undergone hyperbaric treatments to prepare for the surgery because of the damage the radiation did to his mouth. It all started with his last wisdom tooth, but there turned out to be a lot more radiation damage than we knew.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Monday, September 07, 2009
Destiny & Doggies
Wow - it's been a long time since I've done a post....
The story of how Brownie became Snoopy.
Shortly after Christmas (Jan. 2009), we noticed that Red, our oldest dog, needed a new bed. We bought him a corner piece that he seemed to like, but it was bigger than the corner it was put in and so different from his former bed that we tried another one. He kept chewing on it so we put the corner piece back and wondered what to do with the extra bed.
Sometime in Jan. or Feb. of 2009, new neighbors moved into the rental house next door; husband, wife, 3 kids. We often saw the kids coming home from school and one day I had to help them out as their mom wasn't home from college yet (she had just started classes).
One Saturday afternoon (2/14 - valentines day - to be exact) I noticed the van pull away from the house. A little while later, when I was in the garage doing laundry, I heard a dog whine. I checked to see if our dogs were out, but...nope...they were inside. When I came in, I told Gil "I think the neighbors adopted a dog and left him in the garage".
A few minutes later we saw a puppy wandering around the driveway. It was just past 1pm and we didn't know when the family would be home so we took him in. He looked like a beagle, so, not knowing his name, we called him Snoopy. He, of course, went nuts playing with Red & Merlyn. Around 5pm our in-laws came over for a cook-out and were surprised to meet the puppy until about 7pm when the family came home and we had to return him.
Over the next few months we found out his name was Brownie, we caught him the few times he took off through the neighborhood, trimmed a broken nail, sneaked him food in the backyard where he seemed to spend all of his time, tried to teach the kids how to train him and watched him 'play' with "grandpa's" dogs - wolf hybrids. The kids were pretty young, so I tried to work mostly with the oldest daughter, but she, at 8 years of age, seemed to be pretty afraid of the dog. Her two younger brothers wanted to learn,but didn't have the focus.
On & off we had discussed adopting another dog since Nikita had passed, but wanted to wait for Cleo, our oldest cat, to pass. But the appearance of this new puppy in the neighborhood had us really considering it again. I had a friend at school that was diligently on the look out for dogs on 'death row' and trying to find them homes that I started discussing dogs with.
About a month ago, we got a little worried as the family seemed to be gone all weekend, and people were coming by to look at the house. It turned out the husband was being relocated back to Orlando to the job he had been moved here from - managing an American Signature store - a complicated story and I'm sure a sign of our economic times. I asked the owner's daughter that was showing the property about the dog (a mistake??). She was taking care of Brownie while they were out of town but assumed they were taking the dog with them.
As it turned out, the kids were allergic (although I still wonder about some suspicious plants in the front yard) and the condo they were moving into wouldn't take pets. I was at school (work) when Gil contacted me and asked if I wanted the dog. As many times as we had plotted to take the dog I was a little worried, but it turned out that the wife had offered the dog.
We gladly adopted him and re-named him Snoopy. Now, he is 6 months old and has fun torturing Merlyn (dragging him by his back leg, wrestling & biting and some other...stuff), challenging Red, learning how we work, and, occasionally, sleeping in the spare dog bed!
The story of how Brownie became Snoopy.
Shortly after Christmas (Jan. 2009), we noticed that Red, our oldest dog, needed a new bed. We bought him a corner piece that he seemed to like, but it was bigger than the corner it was put in and so different from his former bed that we tried another one. He kept chewing on it so we put the corner piece back and wondered what to do with the extra bed.
Sometime in Jan. or Feb. of 2009, new neighbors moved into the rental house next door; husband, wife, 3 kids. We often saw the kids coming home from school and one day I had to help them out as their mom wasn't home from college yet (she had just started classes).
One Saturday afternoon (2/14 - valentines day - to be exact) I noticed the van pull away from the house. A little while later, when I was in the garage doing laundry, I heard a dog whine. I checked to see if our dogs were out, but...nope...they were inside. When I came in, I told Gil "I think the neighbors adopted a dog and left him in the garage".
A few minutes later we saw a puppy wandering around the driveway. It was just past 1pm and we didn't know when the family would be home so we took him in. He looked like a beagle, so, not knowing his name, we called him Snoopy. He, of course, went nuts playing with Red & Merlyn. Around 5pm our in-laws came over for a cook-out and were surprised to meet the puppy until about 7pm when the family came home and we had to return him.
Over the next few months we found out his name was Brownie, we caught him the few times he took off through the neighborhood, trimmed a broken nail, sneaked him food in the backyard where he seemed to spend all of his time, tried to teach the kids how to train him and watched him 'play' with "grandpa's" dogs - wolf hybrids. The kids were pretty young, so I tried to work mostly with the oldest daughter, but she, at 8 years of age, seemed to be pretty afraid of the dog. Her two younger brothers wanted to learn,but didn't have the focus.
On & off we had discussed adopting another dog since Nikita had passed, but wanted to wait for Cleo, our oldest cat, to pass. But the appearance of this new puppy in the neighborhood had us really considering it again. I had a friend at school that was diligently on the look out for dogs on 'death row' and trying to find them homes that I started discussing dogs with.
About a month ago, we got a little worried as the family seemed to be gone all weekend, and people were coming by to look at the house. It turned out the husband was being relocated back to Orlando to the job he had been moved here from - managing an American Signature store - a complicated story and I'm sure a sign of our economic times. I asked the owner's daughter that was showing the property about the dog (a mistake??). She was taking care of Brownie while they were out of town but assumed they were taking the dog with them.
As it turned out, the kids were allergic (although I still wonder about some suspicious plants in the front yard) and the condo they were moving into wouldn't take pets. I was at school (work) when Gil contacted me and asked if I wanted the dog. As many times as we had plotted to take the dog I was a little worried, but it turned out that the wife had offered the dog.
We gladly adopted him and re-named him Snoopy. Now, he is 6 months old and has fun torturing Merlyn (dragging him by his back leg, wrestling & biting and some other...stuff), challenging Red, learning how we work, and, occasionally, sleeping in the spare dog bed!
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