2011

We had two great events this year - our 46th anniversary, spent with Jerry and Bev.    This has become a ritual now ever since we moved to Arizona.     We take them out to dinner for their birthdays and anniversary, and then they do the same for us.     We've eaten in some great places doing this.

And of course the big event, was the birthday party put on for us by Louise in Fresno.    It was Dick's 80th and there were 80 people.    Among the highlights was Louise taking a photo of everyone who came, so we have a wonderful album of the event, and the book put together by Marie and Mindy depicting Dick's life.    Seeing all our friends, relatives and what Dick terms his 'downline' was a great event for us.     The 'downline' got together after the party and had a group photo taken:

Unfortunately though the 'bad stuff' continued this year.     Dick's health did improve with the two new medicines and the treatment we received from his cardiologist, Suzanne Sorof, who specialized in PAH, but we did have some scary moments during the year with drops in the oxygen level for one reason or another, and in the early winter, Dick became very ill with his breathing and ended up with ambulance and paramedics coming and taking him to the hospital for a couple of day.

Then I decided to 'get in the act', and through a routine check on my heart stents, the doctor noticed a spot on my lung.     A number of tests later revealed that it was cancer and in the October I had the upper right lobe removed.     On the day I was supposed to come home, I 'flat lined' twice, which resulted in yet another surgery to install a pacemaker.     The recovery was slow but steady and by catching it so early (thanks to God and Dr. Bell), I did not have to have any follow up treatment.

Our declining health did make us realize that it was getting increasingly difficult for us to keep up a three bedroom house and the garden, which by this point Dick had really turned into a show place:

So we made up our mind to put the house up for sale.     We had really enjoyed this house and were very proud of the garden, but we really felt we had to move on.     We knew that Scruffy would be disappointed too, as it was the first time he had had a doggy door and completely free access to his own yard.    He had a bad habit though of taking anything that was important to him and burying it in the yard - so we were always finding little toys buried out there.     We always knew when he been doing it, because he would come in with dirt all over his nose - looking innocent of course:

2010

2010 was filled with visitors - all of which were enjoyed and greatly appreciated.    It makes us feel special when people come to visit us.     Looking through my photos I couldn't find one of Suzanne and James who visited us either this year or the next, so I'm sorry if I have that out of sequence.\

Other visits were from cousins Phyllis and Janice:

Mindy, Marie, Kody and Kayden:

Mair and Kitty.     They stayed a month and we were able to take many side trips to various places of interest.    We had had a exceptionally wet winter and spring, and as a result we had a glorious desert to show off to them.    The cacti was in full bloom, as were the native wildflowers.

It was Mair's last trip with me.     She was unable to take many of the tours with Kitty and I and she stayed in the car with Dick.     It was sad to see her declining.

Debbie, Blake and Amber came in the summer (school vacation time) and braved our Arizona heat to see some local attraction:

The last of the year was Cody and Karen.     We always enjoy our time with them:

These wonderful visits helped to take our minds off the over-riding problems of the year.    Things at Falconhead had progressed to the point that we just couldn't handle it and with Dick's health declining could not go back and forth to Oklahoma to try to take care of the never ending problems of the tenants, so we made the very difficult decision to put an end to it all and contacted our two lenders on the townhouses and explained the problem to them and asked for a Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure.     Verbally they said they would work with us and the nightmare started.     At the same time we had to stop making payments to the Homeowner's Associations.     The right hands of the banks could never get together with what the left hands were doing, as a result we kept getting contradicting instructions on how they wanted to handle it and it dragged on and on, at the same time the collection departments were calling us day after day.     To add to what seemed like a nightmare, the person who was buying our condo suddenly wasn't making her payments.    With the turn in the overall economy, her place of business had shut down and at age 60 she was finding it impossible to find another job.    She finally forfeited on the loan and we had to go through the foreclosure on her.     In the meantime the market had crashed and the condo we had paid $38,000 for, we had to dump at $9,000.

As the months progressed Dick's health got worse and he started the year in the hospital with his oxygen level at 72%.    He was put on oxygen 24/7.    We had some very bad times when he basically would 'lose it' completely and not be able to do the simplest thing, and a couple of times collapsed.

Then later he discovered he had breast cancer and had to go through a complete masectomy.

Me?    Well physically I was doing fairly well except for chronic IBS, but my hair was falling out, my nerves were shot, my nails were splitting and I was more stressed than I can ever remember being.

The amazing thing was that through all this, Dick pulled off miracles in our yard, turning the pile of dirt to something really beautiful and all done, sitting on a chair!   Photos to follow in the next blog.