Thursday, January 8th

Many of you have written asking about the results of the consultation with the neurosurgeons on Tuesday. We drove down to San Diego and arrived about noon. We spent some time with Mother at her apartment across the street from Kaiser Hospital. She had cooked up a pot of vegetable soup that really hit the spot after the drive.

At 3PM we walked across the street for the appointment. We were taken to an observation room to wait for the Drs. Three of them walked in and started talking. The tumor is attached to auditory nerve. It has already done its damage and I will not regain any hearing in the left ear. The auditory nerve does not regenerate itself, but the portion of the nerve that affects balance is self-regenerating. In the meantime the right ear will compensate for the loss of balance.

The tumor is small, about 3mm by 6mm. It is a benign tumor and is common. The course of action can be radiation gamma knife, removal by surgery, or monitoring and doing nothing right now. I would prefer surgery, but they could not schedule me until March. Plus there’s a 4-6 week recovery time. Since we have so many things planned in the next few months, we decided to wait until September when we return to San Diego, get another MRI and hearing test, and check the tumor then. The Drs. agreed that would be a good choice since the tumor is so small. They have over 300 patients they are monitoring like this and said it’s not an imminent problem.

We left somewhat relieved knowing that we can take care it in 9 months and continue with our plans. We drove back up to Indio that night and enjoyed our own bed.

We are parked at the Western Horizons Indian Waters Resort and walking the two blocks to the FMCA Rally. The park has electric & water hook-ups, and we’re parked right next to the dump station so I can run a hose over to the dump to empty our gray water tank. It’s very convenient and easy to handle with the comfort of electrical connections.

Our plan, as of today, is to leave Indio on Sunday and drive to Quartzsite for 10 days. If we need to go to Yuma to look at property or submit an offer on one, we can drive the car the 90 miles to get there for a day trip. We’ll take the coach to Yuma on Wed., Jan. 21st, for a few days and return to San Diego on Sat., Jan.24th. We hope to stay in San Diego until Sunday, Feb.1st, and go back to Yuma until the 13th. At that point we’ll head out for Georgia.

Those are our current plans - as you know, it’s could all change! We hope to have a piece of Yuma real estate by the time we leave and have a place to return to in September.

Thanks for all the emails and encouragement. We really enjoy hearing from everybody and knowing what all of you are doing.