There’s a lot of chatter about “gratitude journals” and such.  I never could seem to get in the habit of purposely writing down things to be grateful for.  I dunno, it just seems a little sappy.  But some people swear by it, so who am I to judge?

I saw the radiology oncologist last week and it was actually a good visit.  He seems like a very down to earth and personable man and he knew the history of my diagnosis and surgery (without looking at a chart!).  He was also willing to answer questions, always a plus.  The part that was a little unnerving is when he said my particular brand of cancer is “high risk” because it was found in multiple lymph nodes.  Isn’t cancer already high risk without having to take on those words?

In other words, the tumor is gone but “microscopic disease” is still, theoretically, floating around somewhere in my body.  THIS is my reality.  So they are going to try to kill it with chemo (which goes everywhere) and radiation (targeted to one main area).  There will be really no way to know if it is “gone” unless it doesn’t show up again.  For five years.  Sobering thought, no?

I originally thought there might be a week or two of relative down time from treatment so I could travel back to PA and visit with some folks and just get the heck out of the house for a few days.  That turned out to not really be the case.  April is already filled with appointments and radiation will likely start toward the end of the month…and that will go for five days a week for five weeks.  Yup.  Fun stuff.

So I was majorly bumming last week.  For the past 15 or 20 years, I have almost ALWAYS had a plan to go somewhere, even for just a long weekend, on the future agenda.  And now, no plan and really no plans can be made more than a week or two in advance.  It’s frustrating and upsetting.

Anyway, I have been brainstorming places to go that are nearby and can be done in a couple of hours (and NO, anything Disney is completely off the agenda).   I decided to take Chance on a little hike this morning by a local lake…our Walk in the Woods so to speak.  But it was raining this morning meaning the walk would likely be a bit swampy.  Bummer.

Instead, I decided to do our usual 3 mile Sunday morning walk with a twist.  In order to make it seem more like an “outing” I decided to take pictures along the way of beautiful things.  We have done this walk hundreds of times over the years but this was the first time I stopped to really enjoy the sites AND the first to really seek out photo worthy subjects.  The picture above is a pond by the golf course.

Along the way, I decided to be grateful for feeling well enough to walk three miles AND to be grateful for such a nice route to walk.  Totally cheered me up so maybe there is something to be said for that gratitude thing.  Huh.  Lesson learned.  🙂

And here is Chance telling me to put down the dang camera so we can keep walking….