Where the hell have you been???

That is the question I must ask myself as I finally return to this blog.  Where have I been and why am I here again? You'd think after so long I'd lose interest and give it up. Well, besides being extremely busy planning my own wedding - no I am not going to start a blog about the wedding, wedding planning, wedding day events, wedding memories, etc - I have also been battling with the decision of how public I'd like to make my private life.  I was quite taken aback when a potential business client entered a meeting with me for the first time and noticing the engagement ring on my finger said, "so he finally proposed." Immediately thoughts of terror ran through my mind.  Do I know him? Where from? What did I say or do when we met? My heartbeat slowed only slightly when he said he'd Google'd me before the meeting and came across all my blog posts.  Creepy. Not him but me! How creepy of me to post my personal relationship happenings on an all too public blog. But wait that's the point of these, right? Right...I almost forgot.  It was then that I began an internal dialogue as to whether or not blogging was actually for me. I was flattered when my potential client (who btw is head of his company's Internet marketing group so it's only appropriate that he would Google me before the meeting) told me that my style of writing engaged him enough to read all the posts and wonder what had been going on since my last post oh-so-long-ago.  But was flattery for my creative writing enough to keep me blabbing about our private life? I soon decided 'yes!' And then the other foot dropped.  After a beautiful wedding and in the middle of an amazing honeymoon we discovered something that I wasn't sure I wanted to blog about. 

Cancer.

While we'd been feverishly planning the wedding of my - a'hem - our dreams a very active tumor had begun growing on Rick's lung and eventually migrated also to his heart. It was a pain whose cause is to this day shrouded in mystery that caused us to rush my new husband to a Dominican emergency room 2 days into our honeymoon. After many a scan and x-ray even the doctors didn't know what to think. They wouldn't show us any results for fear that we may not be equipped handle such news. Better that we travel back home in blissful ignorance than in distraught depression. Once back home the U.S. doctors were much more realistic, if not cruel, having almost convinced us that Rick had a lung cancer caused by asbestos. One which has a death rate that you could take to Vegas. After doing some research we realized that was close to impossible and found ourselves in a much happier place with more caring and knowledgeable doctors at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. So far we've been happy with the treatment and if nothing else we've made some progress.

So let's get the basics out of the way now: (1) the doctors don't know what type of cancer it is. It has two different types of cancerous cells and it's lackluster response to the chemo treatment has made trial and error diagnosis unfeasible. We've coined it Rick Cancer - it's big, it's dense, it doesn't know what it wants to be, and just kinda sits there. Much like its host. (2) Rick isn't sick, he just has Cancer. When on Thanksgiving his sisters bawked at him going outside without a hat on his brother put it best when he exclaimed, "he's got Cancer, not pneumonia!" Rick is in amazing shape, he was losing his hair anyway, and he looks better bald - so no he doesn't 'look' like he has Cancer. (3) We're fine. Yes, he has Cancer and, yes, it's scary to think what we'll do if all these treatments don't work, but other than that it's fine.  (4) We don't feel like talking about it.  It will come up in conversation - and in this blog - (it's impossible for it not to) but it's not who we are so it's not all we feel like talking about. 

Whew - not that was therapeutic. Now we can move on.  Welcome back! Oh and Merry Christmas!