As you are reading this, I am just getting settled in, having been on the road for over a week with my family plus one. I'm sure most of you know by now that we have been delivering my oldest son, Josh, to his new life in Phoenix, Arizona. "Our family plus one" consists of my husband, our three sons, and Josh's best friend.

We took my extended mini van...
with no air conditioning...
through the desert.
Just the thought makes me cough!!!

Now I'm not saying these guys smell bad, but seriously... they are guys, and guys who have been traveling in the desert with no a/c are not the formula for a perfect vacation! Lucky for me these are some very special guys.

They entertain me!!!

We had decided to stretch a 22 hour trip into a week since we had never taken a family vacation. They did better than I had expected as far as bickering goes. We had expected to be without anything but cassettes to listen to, and you can imagine how old that would get. At the last minute David found that we could get an adapter for $15 to make his truck stereo work in my van. And if that wasn't enough, a friend of Josh's loaned us her Diskman and car kit as we were leaving. Lucky thing we like most of Josh's 200+ CD's!!! Gonna miss those cd's...

We camped most nights in a tent. Any idea how hard it is to find somewhere to camp in a tent? There are RV parks to "camp" in everywhere, but not so if you are in a tent! There was one nice thing about camping in strange places, and that was the lack of fire-ants. It does my heart good to know they haven't spread everywhere yet.

While camping in the forest near the Grand Canyon, our 15 year old discovered a new talent...making flatulent noises using an empty plastic bottle and his finger. At one point some nearby campers came walking by asking what game we were playing, as we were all sitting around the table with our "Wendy's lamp" shining, and laughing like loons. Before we could answer our son makes his noise and says, "this game!". Luckily they had a sense of humor. (In case you are wondering, our "Wendy's lamp" was a flashlight set upright with an empty drink cup from Wendy's hamburger chain over the light.)

So now my baby is set up in his own apartment in a metro area of 2.45 million people and will start school on the Monday after this was written. He was placed in an apartment with 3 other guys who have been living together for 10 months. I was NOT happy with this arrangement at all, until I met two of his three roommates. Now I think he'll do just fine. Besides, and this is 100% true, as we left his apartment to return to our camp there was a beautiful rainbow on our right, and the most amazing sunset I've ever witnessed on our left, and every cloud had a silver lining!!! The next morning when we went to say goodbye he seemed completely at home. So even though I've shed tears for my loss, I'm very happy for him, and very proud of him.

If you'd like to know more about our trip, well... you're a glutton for punishment! But if you can't live without knowing

CLICK HERE.

But I am actually going to get serious for a few moments here. At least I'm planning to :-))

When I was just a baby my mom had to have all of her upper teeth pulled. She was scared to death of dentists as it was, but after this ordeal she was hospitalized at 95 lbs. suffering from dehydration. She went to her grave without ever having the lowers removed because of the fear she felt towards dentists. I explained to her so many times that things had changed, that dentists today are so much more gentle. They numb your gums just to give you the shot to numb your gums!
But it never helped.

This fear of dentists is so ingrained in some people, even if they've never had a bad experience, that they will avoid going to one until they have no choice. This same fear exists toward colorectal exams. Yes, I said colorectal! As your reading this, I'm preparing for a journey of another sort... my annual sigmoidoscopy. That's fancy talk for saying "short scope". This is not the colonoscopy, where they check out the whole colon. (I get that pleasure ever 3 years) So why am I telling you this?

Because colorectal cancer is one of the most treatable types of cancer there is, and probably the most feared.

It's not just the cancer that people fear, it's the exam!

And it's not just embarrassment ... it's the invasive factor.

I went for years with symptoms that didn't match any of the brochures I would pick up, or any of the info I read online. The reason I waited so long? I was terrified that they would do the dreaded "barium enema". That is one thing that they have never done to me! LOL
I was lucky, I ended up having several non-cancerous polyps removed, and one mass that was going through pre-cancerous changes. My colorectal specialist told me it would have been full blown cancer within a year.

So I'm here to tell you that this is not a person to fear. My specialist had colorectal problems as a child and was determined to make this experience as comfortable as possible for his own patients. He's very respectful, beyond gentle, and has a good sense of humor. The "scope" type of exams are not done in his office. These are considered out-patient surgery and are done at either a surgery center or hospital. They use a light anesthetic so you have very little to no discomfort. And take my word for it, there is nothing that the nursing staff hasn't seen or heard before.

So this is my personal crusade. if just one person says, "I wonder if it is more than nerves causing that problem", or "I don't care if so and so has similar symptoms, I'm going to get checked..." then I'll feel like I haven't wasted my time here.

Trust me when I say that the peace of mind far out weighs the not knowing.

Questions?

Visit this wonderful site

Colon Connections

Last month's poll asked whether we had more sons or daughters in The Women's Garden.
As of this writing daughters have won out by 17%!!!

,p