What's Been Going On In My World

Well, as usual, I open up my Blogger main page to see what new posts, tradesa nd group breaks there are, being the good little lurker that I am, when my eyes wander up to the top of the page, where I can see, "last published on Dec. 26, 2011." Yikes. But there has been a lot going on.

As I have already written about here, 2011 was quite the eventful year for the Pederson household. As it turns out, 2012 has already started out with plenty of activity. To start out the year, I found myself with a new job. Basically, I'm a manufacturing technitian at a sugar factory in ND, which is never the job you expect to find yorself in when you're pursuing a college degree. But the pay is good, I get plenty of hours, and most importantly, DAY ONE HEALTH INSURANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That came into play, because TEN days after I began work, my wife went in for her second surgery to remove some cancer-infected lymph nodes from her neck. One of the deals she made with me when we moved up to North Dakota was that she would support the move, so long as she could fly back to Houston to have her surgery done at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. I know there are a lot of good cancer treatment facilities all across the country. In fact, we have the Roger Maris Cancer Center right here in Fargo. But when people literally fly across the world to get their treatment done, that's when you know you have a good place.

We had the surgery done last Thursday. Since she had a thyroidectomy last December to remove a cancer-infected thyroid gland, and they would have to go through a recently-operated-on area, this was a very delicate operation, but by all accounts, we pretty much had the best guy in the world at this kind of operation, doing this operation.

After four hours, the doctors came out to the waiting room and spoke with me. He said everything went as well as it could have. When I asked him how many lymph nodes were removed, all he could say was that they removed "a lot." As good news, a node of concern that would require a third surgery, due to its location, came up benign when they did an ultrasound. After a couple more hours, she woke up feeling groggy, sounding hoarse, and on her way to recovery.

She and the baby are still in Houston, spending time with her family and taking care of a couple follow-up appointments, while I came back with our 3-year-old, to get back to work.

When I finally sat down and took a breath, I realized that I have been REALLY out of touch the past couple of weeks. I know there was a good reason, but I have a couple of weeks-old trades that need to be shipped out, and a few ebay packages that need to be mailed. Hopefully now I can play some catch-up.

Talk to you all soon.