October what a month!

Ok this month started out with Joe having a tumor removed from his sinuses - yeah scary, eh?

Next the drainfield for our septic failed & now we have a HUGE mess in the back yard.. Argg!!

This is looking down at the house from the top of the garden at the back... It is a pretty good pic too of the finished roof & deck, Joe replaced the original roof over the hot tub & the decking around it too so that it all matched the additions we made a couple of years back.

Still work going on in the South end ---> like a window to go in that wall & a built in closet/storage for stuff that needs to live out there on the deck as well as a laundry tub as there is none inside the house a fact that seems odd to me ;9

It was an easy if messy fix & while the backhoe is here we are adding an extra hole full of rock for all the rainwater that comes off the west side of the house & the roof over the deck. This should help keep the yard a little less soggy over the wet winter that is in store for us compliments of La Nina..

I imagine the backyard will be something of a mud hole for most of the winter but we will cope ok, worse things are happening elsewhere right now. Like the horrific fires in Calafornia, my heart goes out to those folk who have lost their homes & those in fear of losing their's. Thank God there are not as many lives lost as there were in the last big fires they had down there..

Anyhow back to Joe, we saw his Oncologist today about the tumor they removed from his sinuses 3 weeks ago... He has a form of lymphoma, exactly what we don't know yet... The Dr was concerned because the 'almost cancer' lump they took (back in February) was from the left side of his neck & this was from the right side of his face, he seemed to think this odd as it is unusual for these things to be both sides of the body at once kind of or something

Like Joe says, he is nothing if not unusual.

He has to have a PET scan which is a scan of the lymphatic system to see there is anything else there - He had one of these done after we got back from NZ last April - & it showed nothing, so so much for that!! But this thing they removed must have grown quite fast, another thing that appeared to worry Joe's Oncologist.

He also has to see Dr Nichols an Oncologist who specializes in Lymphoma & incidentally treated Lance Armstrong, the famous cyclist who won the Tour de France several times, so we know he is good!

I'll let you know when we know more, please keep Joe in your prayers he is pretending to not be worried but he is & so am I

Oh yes, my dear Mother is not doing well at all, she had a clot removed from her ankle area a few weeks back & now has cellulitis & is not able to get up & walk on that leg at all, I spoke with the manager of the home where she lives this evening & she tells me that the antibiotics are working as the cellulitis looks to be clearing up, I hope so, that is a wicked infection. Her poor old body is starting to shut down & that saddens me more than words can say.. I fear I will be on a plane winging my way to New Zealand very soon

I am making progress on my 'whatever month' page for the BJP - I am so far behind that I need to look at another way of keeping up... Bead more often? LOL I'm trying to ha haaa

I hope to have some pics of what I am working on now to share after this next weekend

~smiles~ Ellen