Getting to the point...I've been gone for longer than I ever intended, but life got in the way. I got cancer - twice. I changed grade levels at school, and a stray cat who turned out to be pregnant adopted me. Lucky me. Really! Lucky me.
First, I went from teaching 6th grade to teaching 8th graders. I had actually started my teaching career 19th years ago with 8th graders so it didn't take me long to get back in the groove, and I had a really wonderful 8th grade veteran teacher to help me and listen to me vent from time to time. Without her, it would have definitely been a bad year because that was the year I found out about the cancer.
Next, meet Groucho. In the picture, he is about 3 months old. He is too curious and has a little stubbie for a tail. His momma turned up in June of 2015 and was just a sweetheart. She'd been hanging around the house for about a week when she got bit on her paw. It started swelling up so I took her to my vet. It got better, and then we noticed she was getting fat. She had 7 kittens a month later. Five of them managed to find great homes, but Groucho was mine from the minute he grew a personality. We couldn't find a home for his brother, Snowball, so he stayed as well.
Then one Friday night, after a long week at school, I had a pain in my right side. The next morning, it was worse, so we made a trip to my local Urgent Care thinking that it couldn't be anything serious. They sent me to a nearby ER center for a cat scan, and they found a tumor on my liver. After a transfer to a hospital and a biopsy, the diagnosis was Intrahepatic bile duct carcinoma.
So there you are, almost caught up. More to come later, but yes, lucky! I'm still here.
