Do I Dare to Dream a Different Dream?

     For as long as I can remember I've always wanted to teach.  I would make my younger brothers and sisters be part of my "classroom" and make worksheets for them.  If they didn't want to play then dolls and stuffed animals made up the student population.  I have been teaching science for 32 years.
     Today I took the first steps toward retirement.  Come June and I will put this chapter of my life away.  What I have depended on for finance and self-defining will be gone. Bittersweet memories flood my mind.  Who am I without my job telling me?
     I have no idea.
     The cancer has made me feel like I need to do something else, before I run out of time.  So time to dream.  I started making a bucket list and decided I didn't like the phrase "bucket list."  So I'm just going to call them dreams.  So I want to dream big and often.  Categories are important so I don't get bogged down in one area.
    So top dreams in travel for right now:

Spend the night in a Scottish castle, preferably haunted.


Visit the Biltmore Mansion

Go to Disney World in December for their Christmas celebration

Tour Castles in Ireland, Scotland, England,  and all of Europe.

Rent a cabin in the mountains for a week.

Question of the Day:

What is your dream for a place to travel?

When it Rains it Pours. . . Or Why I've Not Been Blogging

     The end of July was a very scary time for me. On a Monday I went for my yearly check up the the GI doctor and everything went fine, had blood work done and left.  The next morning the doctor called and told me that I was seriously sick and needed to go straight to the emergency room.  I argued that I felt fine, just a little tired and that he had me mixed up with someone else.  He told me that my white blood cell count was 4 times normal, the same as someone suffering from severe pneumonia.  I spent the rest of the day in the emergency room waiting to get in.  Near five o'clock finally get sent back and am rushed through various test.  They tell me that they can't find anything that they can deal with and send me home with instructions to see my regular doctor.

     Wednesday morning and I'm being put through all types of test hoping for some sign of infection.  Nothing was found and he made an appointment with an hematologist/oncologist.  Friday I see the new doctor and have more blood test done.  He tells me that he has a suspension of what I had but wasn't making a diagnosis until a DNA test came back and that takes a week.

     A week of nail biting anxiety, fear of dying of cancer like my mother did.  I finally go in for the news and it  is confirmed that I have  Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML).  This doctor told me that this was the least scary of the cancers now because it can be controlled with a pill.  Before 1999 he would have given me less than a year to live with no treatment possible.  The medicine is $7000 a month and the insurance it picking up most of it.  After one month on the medication the white blood cell count was back to normal levels.

     On a side note, earlier in July during an eye exam that doctor found bleeding spots in my eyes which he assumed were from my diabetes.  A follow up in September showed that those spots had completely healed.

      So I have been contemplating my mortality and feeling like time is running out for all my dreams.  But I'll write about that later.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/CML/Patient/page1

Question of the day:

What dream do you want to do before you die?