top score on MasterCard ! ouch Pete is back to work

steved said:

Work therapy
Pete, I know you are keen to have your life full of things that help your recovery and your health and I would propose, done right, work can fall into that category. I have kept working full time as much as possible through this and have found it hugely helpful. It provides the routine, role and normality (strange when I work with seriously mentally ill people) to my day. It stops cancer running my routine, provides distraction and patients at work who know nothing of my illness are the ones who treat me most normally.

Work can be part of the healing too.

steve

pete43lost_at_sea said:

thanks cyn,
was it really good? the icecream!

is n't it crazy, i snuck some of my kids left over chocolate sunday from the freezer today.
it was good as well! so good and i was so bad! its good to be bad sometimes.

so i got no cash, drove up to hunry jacks to get the kids an icecream 50cents here only. but the kids did not want the $2 cheese burger. this was a one off treat for the end of the school holidays. we drove through the drive through ordering nothing, the kids accepting the fact i was not going to buy $1 icecream on the credit card.

so we went home, i cooked up some free range chicken satay stick and veg and then made a delicious pumpkin soup. they had no icecream and i got last weeks left over icecream sunday.

my pumkin soup recipe all organic pumkin about 5 cups, a large potatoe,, an onion. coconut cream, cinammon, some vegetable stock with alkaline water. the puree at end gets rid of the seeds and the skin. thats right i use all the pumpkin. if its organic why not?

health and cheap and i was happy and so were the kids. running low on cash, i have new found empathy for having to choose the alternatives that are affordable. my wheat grass is going great guns.

hugs,
pete

Sundanceh said:

"Here in the Real World..."
"It's not that easy at all."

Well, that's the way that Alan Jackson sang about it.

I tend to agree with your wife, Pete...you fought your initial fight...and then your pursuit for all the other was holiday time....I've fought eight-years and can't get 2 minutes, much less 2 years.

The ladies are being too kind to you, Pete...I can assure you that here in the good ol' USA and especially down South, the women folk here want their men working and getting it done.

There's not a southern honey (or a northern honey either) I know that would be off raising the kids and running businesses - while their husband spent the day meditating and pursuing his pleasures...all day every day for that length of time.

...especially if he was able- bodied and young - which you are.

Believe me.

They'd have you out of here like "$hit through a goose."

So, Welcome Back to the Real World...

I feel trapped with work and don't get the enjoyment or fulfillment out of it anymore - I want more at this stage of my life...but I'm not blessed with the financial floorplan that you have to operate with, so I must work for my insurance and try to build a better life and pay bill down - in case I can earn a chance to enjoy any life that I have left.

Keep in mind, Pete...that there are so many of us not as blessed financially as you are...it's your money to do with as you will...but when you tell folks that you're $75K in credit card debt and that it mostly was spent on your health hobby, there are many of us that are barely able to get by every 2-weeks and they might barely have 75 cents to their name.

Alot of folks are doing without they are so strapped. Why they said "good going" it might actually be hurting a segment of the population who are unable to dig as deeply as you can...or have million dollar homes to trade in for security...that's the "hand to mouth" club...and it's real.

I know of a situation in our community right now who would love to see one another...but they cannot due to financial limitations...I've been trying to save up money for one of them to travel to the other (they don't know about it yet)...I figure it will be about $500, maybe a little more.

If I can save that money out of my paychecks, I've been working on it awhile but am not close to there just yet.

I'm going to buy one of them a plane ticket and make this reunion a reality so they can hug one another - before something happens and that opportunity is lost. That would be really upsetting to me if this did not happen.

My sacrifice will also cost my wife, but she agrees with me and says we should do it if and when we can. This will come at the expense of anything I want or need - it means that the trip I wanted to take this year probably won't be happening....but this just seems so much more important.

You see, Pete?

I'm trying to pay it forward - cancer teaches us to look outside of our selves and our own selfish interests - and try to see a need and fill that niche for someone else - if we are ever in a position to do that.

You're not at the stage of your cancer journey where you see other people - you are still walking the path of self-interests and you find yourself absorbed at that level with you. It is my hopes that one day you will see what a difference you could make in someone else's life and help to make a dream come true for someone else.

That's the small grass roots movement that I like to practice...

I just wanted to offer another perspective for you.

-Craig

Lovekitties said:

Dear Pete
I think you are giving a bit TMI (too much information) about your finances and how you spend it.

How you spend your money is certainly your choice, but I can't find sympathy for your situation.

The pictures you paint of the wife working very hard to save your assets and your children doing without the small treat of an ice cream cone while lamenting you have to go back to work does not show you in a good light.

The insight you give us here is that you are running scared from cancer trying to find a cure at the expense of all else.

Life has to be more than our fear that cancer may eventually kill us.

Fear of what might be will bring us down far faster than any disease can.

We all must find a balance to do what we must for our health while building good memories, for those we love, to cherish when we are gone.

I hope you can find that balance.

Marie who loves kitties

pete43lost_at_sea said:

thanks for the kind and critical comments
Praise and bash away,

the challenge of our cancer and our situations are all unique.

Over the last 18 months i have shared mostly my alternative treatments, now some call them scams and others worthwhile treatments. Well i will just say I have "faith" in my alternatives and fully respect others with different opinions.

Whats really caused the financial problem is not the supplements and the alternative therapies but my decision to see if my wife could run our business while i looked after the kids and focused on my healing. That meant alot business pressure was moved to her shoulders while I coped with kids and cancer pressures. At least on a day to day level. Of course background cancer pressure is with my wife and kids.

I love my hippee alternative lifestyle, i could afford it if we disposed of assets, but we don't have agreement on that yet!. The hippee life, is just on hold! until I can do some business magic, If I still have it in me.

My focus has been healing myself and caring for family, thats cooking the meals, buying the food, picking kids up, taking them to sport. i have been juggling that and my lifestyle treatments and my rising CEA is potentially stable at 47. It may or may not be active disease. Winter i hope you are correct, but from my extensive research cea get over 10 are due to crc. Thats why I am trying so dam hard to fight this illness early on with a range of alternatives when nothing is offered by conventional medicine.

I am glad i have my meditation skills, my peaceful and joyful approach to cancer, to our potential short term financial hardship are all managable.

The extensive range of well selected supplements have all been advised by my team of alternative doctors. that was the best advice i had at the time. I also researched their suggestions and went ahead.

Maximum my supplements are costing $500 a week and that includes doctor consults, 3 lots of iv C and a massive load load "essential" supplements as i see it.

So the budget for the year is only $60K.

Whats really done us in is the financial downturn and our business and i guess my wife ability to cope with it.

So I am doing my business in a very peaceful meditiative style, much different to the old days. My wife and I are working together peacefully, except she still wants things done her way, which i simply explain my reasons on the spot.

We will be fine even if the business goes under, in someways it will be a relief.

But my business was something i built up, that suits my skills and unfortunately not my wifes.

Its a lovelly day, i have to dash peacefully to get my IV C, get into the city and then get back to pickup the kids.

hugs,
Pete