While doctors hate to hear this, sometimes we know our bodies better than a scanning machine. It may sound new age, voodoo, or whatever, but I know when something isn't right in me, and I don't care what their damn machines and test say. This isn't hypochondria. I kept telling the doctors before my diagnosis that that lump in my neck didn't hurt. I knew that was not an infection. A swollen node from and infection is tender to the touch, I could flick this thing with my finger and not a bit of pain. More of the pooh pooh routine, and another 2 weeks wasted on antibiotics...till a FNB found malignant cells in that node. Hey all you doctors out there...just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean something isn't really out to get me!!!

Digtexas: As to the life insurance...I thought at five years out I would be able to get a small policy... think again. No one would touch me, not at any cost. God help me if I lose my crumby Blue Cross who I had to fight with daily during my illness because I went out of state for treatment. I'd never get another health insurance policy. They've upped my rates since all this, and the premiums are almost the same as my house payment!!! But if I don't keep it active...who else will take me on?

Donnajean: It has taken me fifty years to learn not to worry about the future. It is still a hard fight to live in each day that I am in fully. You waste too much of the present worrying about a future that you can likely not control anyway. My 5-year anniversary came and went, and it wasn't until Ingrid reminded me that I had passed a milestone that I thought about it. Perhaps this shows some success at my ability to live in the present, on the other hand it just may mean that I'm now of the age where those "senior moments" where you forget what the hell you were doing are occurring more frequently.