Two Strong Women

Yal.. I know. I have already blogged about my Mom before. But maybe some things are worth doing twice. Actually, this is my Mom and Larry's Sis.. Lolly. And they are two strong women.

My Mom.. well you know about her if you read my other blog. Lolly is something else again.

Breast cancer in 1998.. so now a 12 year survivor. Long history of Crohn's Disease. A very hard thing to live with. Life threatening and life changing for sure. Her husband Craig was diagnosed with colon cancer a year after she finished her treatment for the breast cancer. He passed away a couple of years after that. Get the picture? Well, I am not done yet.

Lolly spent most of her adult life working as a broker for King County Medical. She should have had a great retirement, no worries. But some things don't work out as we plan them. She left work early, taking a big loss in her pension, to take care of her husband while he was ill. She would make the same decision again.. but it was another life changing event.

After he died she sold their house and moved into a great retirement mobile home park...a place she planned to stay forever. It was sold about a year after she moved there; big plans for condos. She could buy into that but it was too expensive. There is alot more to the story than that but to make this story short... she lost most of everything in that investment.

Then she decided to move to Vancouver from the Seattle area, to be closer to Larry and me. Since moving here she has been in the hospital multiple times. She had a horrible flare up(s) with her Crohn's, the gallbladder surgery from hell and multiple other issues. She started on a great medication for her Crohn's.. and it controlled the symptoms better than anything she had tried yet. But now two years later she has been diagnosed with congestive heart failture....quite possibly as a result of an unlucky side effect from that medication.

Has she given up? No way! She just keeps plugging away, fighting and figuring out how to configure her life to each new obstacle. I am not sure I could be that strong or keep going but she does. So she has earned a place in my blog for her tenacity and lust for life. To celebrate her, I proudly wear a breast cancer icon on my left ankle.