I am BACK!!

I think everyone will agree that 2020 was a bad year. The first half of 2021 was rough too. Some of you may know that on July 10, 2020, I was diagnosed with Stage 3c colorectal cancer. Cancer is a scary word. Would I die? The surgeon told me that a majority of people with my diagnosis live 2 to 5 years.

Oh, boy. Scary stuff. My oncologist, though, was a cheerleader. He said we could and would fight this. He laid out a treatment plan for me. First, infusion chemotherapy every other week, with an infusion pump to wear at home for two days. That started in August and ended in December. After that, 28 daily radiation treatments with oral chemo pills. I finished that on January 21st. It wasn’t always easy, but I powered through all that, and CT scans and MRIs showed the tumor had shrunk enough that surgery was likely to be a success. They couldn’t guarantee it until they were actually in and saw what was there. My surgery was at the Mayo Clinic to remove the tumor and the affected lymph nodes. When I woke up the surgeon told me she was sure they had gotten all of it. YAY!!! Party time! Being sick a=from chemo and burned from radiation was worth it!!

However, a week later she called me (a surgeon renowned in her field called personally!!) to tell me that the pathology report had found a secondary kind of cancer called well differentiated neuroendocrine tumor. This type was fairly rare and was good at masquerading as healthy cells. She was still sure she had gotten all of it, but I would have to go back in three months for another scan to see if this other cancer was detected anywhere else.

Can you imagine how hard it was to wait for three more months to find out if the cancer had spread? I drove down to Rochester on June 22, had the scan, and met with Dr. Hobday, the Mayo oncologist, on June 23. That’s when he gave me the news:

I AM CANCER FREE!!!!

I had hoped and prayed that I was. And I thought that I was, because for an entire year I had NO interest in writing but

on June 4 I had an idea for a new story. Actually, an old story. I have a bunch of old notebooks that I had scribbled stories in years ago. I remembered one story I had started about 20 years ago but never finished. Suddenly I really really wanted to find it and finished it. I had to go through a ton of old notebooks to find it. I did find it and I am pleased to say I have improved as a writer in the past twenty years 😉

So, I am pretty much re-writing it from scratch and I am loving it. The title is The Storm King. It is a fantasy romance between a conquering king (think Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan, only much sexier) who is set on conquering the lands of his enemies, who had captured him as a teen and made him a slave. The only person who ever treated him decently there was the governor’s beautiful young daughter. She helped him escape, and gave him a pearl pendant on a gold chain as a souvenir to remember her by. He swore to return and marry her. But there is a big twist. More about that to come in the future. I expect it to be around 60,000 words, and I am at 16,450 right now. So I have a good start on it. My goal for the rough draft to be done is September 1. The next story is the Fire Prince, and The third in the trilogy is The Ice Lord. I haven’t been this excited about writing for years!!

So that is my update. I am doing well. I still have a little recovery from surgery to get through, but I feel like I have my life back. Here is hoping for a much improved second half of 2021. I hope you all are well and have wonderful reading material to keep your kindles and nooks busy this summer.