{"id":435,"date":"2017-05-22T01:01:03","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T01:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/?p=435"},"modified":"2017-05-22T01:03:24","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T01:03:24","slug":"weekend-update-sunday-may-20-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/?p=435","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Update: Sunday, May 20, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

By RAHN ADAMS<\/b><\/p>\n

\"Timberley<\/a>
Timberley before our appointment last week in Charlotte<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What you’re about to read certainly wasn’t what Timberley and I had envisioned for this column last September when I started writing it. We wanted it to be about the ordinary lives of two recent retirees from public education\u2014our own attempt at \u201chalf-fast living\u201d after years of watching our working lives fly by largely out of our control.<\/p>\n

That was our intent. Instead, there is nothing half-fast about what’s been happening to us for the past eight weeks. For the foreseeable future, this space will be used hopefully\u2014and I use that adverb there deliberately\u2014to keep our friends and extended family members as informed as they wish to be about a serious situation involving Timberley’s health.<\/p>\n

Here’s a short version of the situation:<\/p>\n

In late March, as I’ve mentioned in a previous column, Timberley found that she had a large kidney stone in her bladder. A local urologist performed out-patient surgery to remove the stone and at the same time took tissue samples to see why it had been there. That’s how we learned that the tissue contained cancer cells and that her bladder would have to be removed.<\/p>\n

Last week we met with a surgeon at the Levine Cancer Institute in Charlotte, as we prepare for her expected surgery next month. There are more appointments to be met and important decisions to be made before the surgery, which we hope will remove the cancer and allow Timberley to resume her life as normally as possible. We are dedicated to her treatment and recovery.<\/p>\n

Right now, you’d never know that anything is amiss just by outward appearances or even by the way Timberley has felt since the stone was removed. More than anything, we’re thankful that our urologist took the time to look for the stone’s cause\u2014another physician might not have\u2014and that he found the cancer at such an early stage. We look forward to excellent treatment and care at Levine.<\/p>\n

So why make all this public? And why now? Because we’re scared, and we don’t feel that keeping all of this secret helps anyone. We want and need the positive thoughts and ardent prayers of our families and friends, of our church, of our former colleagues and students, and of other groups of people with whom we have been associated over the years. We know from experience that we need help.<\/p>\n

At the same time, we realize that everyone expresses their concern differently whether they announce it publicly or not. And that’s where this column comes in, however often I’m able to post it over the weeks and months to come. I probably won’t tell many jokes or try to entertain you. And it may be nothing but a quick statement of facts. But if you care about Timberley, it’ll let you know what’s going on.<\/p>\n

Thanks for reading this column.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By RAHN ADAMS What you’re about to read certainly wasn’t what Timberley and I had envisioned for this column last September when I started writing it. We wanted it to be about the ordinary lives of two recent retirees from public education\u2014our own attempt at \u201chalf-fast living\u201d after years of watching our working lives fly … Continue reading Weekend Update: Sunday, May 20, 2017<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":439,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions\/439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gaillardiapress.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}