We have been anxious to get the path report back
on my mother. Yesterday we got the news and it
is more serious than what we had hoped for and
moreso than maybe we had tricked ourselves into
thinking it would be. She has stage 4B endometrial
cancer. It is advanced and aggressive. They
want to hit back at it aggressively. She will
start her chemo treatments next Friday and then
add radiation into the mix after the second chemo.
She will be a sick puppy.

We trust God, for His ways, whatever they are,
are good.

There was laughter laced throughout the day though.
Becky (sometimes referred to as Philippine sister)
was able to go with my parents to the meeting with
the doctor. My brother, Mike, was listening on
a speaker phone from his office in Orlando. Later
on, as I was talking with Becky, she hit our (hers
and mine)tickle button. She was describing the
doctor that will be doing the radiation. She was
trying to give me a picture of his bedside manner.
At first I thought she meant he had none whatsoever,
but then she clarified it by saying, "Try to imagine
a cross between John Harwell (the minister at my
parent's church) and a buzzard, and that is what
this doctor is like."

"Oh," I was beginning to get it, "you mean he has
a bedside manner, but it is strange."

"YES!"

Not that John Harwell is strange, that is the part
where the manner comes in, but if you add a buzzard
into the mix you have a strange bedside manner.
John, is a terrific man and we like his manner very
much.

Then later I was driving the truck down the gravel,
while doing so I looked over into the pile of junk
piled next to me and saw this wadded up green thing.
It was my nephew's missing jacket which he had left
here over Christmas. I had promised Becky that it
was NOT on my property. I laughed hard. It seemed
so funny to me that it was in the truck, which I
have driven numerous times, though in my defense
I've only been driving it in the dark lately. And
only the day before I found my other sister's missing
coat at church. She though a ghost had taken it.
(She is handicapped.) What a relief it was to her.
Now if I could only find Kent's missing coat.

Miss Read ends one chapter of one of her wonderful
novels with the following. I paraphrase because I
do not have the exact quote.

Oh lovely, lovely life that moves us from tears to
laughter in the space of a moment.