“Can I retire?” Gonna check on it!

 Can anyone really afford to retire?  Can we afford not to retire?

When it’s time, it’s time.  I don’t want to be like Miss Eppie Gardner, one of my mother’s teachers, who sat in the wastepaper basket. 

She had the habit of lecturing or teaching (?) from the desk top.  She would hitch up the right leg and hip and perch on the edge of the teacher desk.  One day, after many years of doing that same thing, day after day, she hitched up, hiked up, lifted, and sat.  But she did not sit on the desk.  She missed and sat in the trashcan!

My cousin and I vowed that if either of us were periously close to that point, we’d be kind enough to tell the other.  My cousin took early retirement and has not regretted a moment of it.  She is living on the lake…has refurbished her house there and, while she has considerably less money, she has a whole lot more peace and happiness.

She was great at her job.  The people did not want her to retire.  But, she knew the time was right and so, she just did it. Single, she is on her own, but has a family of close friends.

Now, it’s my turn to consider retirement. 

Card Carrying Normal Girl

     On a small blue card that I have taped to the inside of a credenza on which my computer sits at work is this word – NORMAL.  That refers to my CA-125 blood test.

     For those of you who are innocent readers and naive to the language of cancer and ovarian cancer, the CA-125 is a test which seeks to find ‘markers’ called ‘tumor markers.’  Normal is anything below 35.  Ladies, you’re not going to have a zero, probably, but the highest number ever recorded in Memphis at the time belongs to me – over 1000 – unbelievable. 

      The number on the card taped inside the door is “6.”  Anything below 10 might as well be a zero.  My current marker is “7.”  I have a card that says, I AM NORMAL. 

      Within the same week, I got a card in the mail related to my PAP Test.  That, too, indicated I am “within NORMAL limits.”  For women, we will take that report any day.  As a bonus, I got the Mammogram report that says “NORMAL.”

      Girls – I have always wanted to be known as Normal.  I always thought I was just a regular, normal girl.  But, beginning in 1994, my life became anything but Normal.  I am so very grateful to God, to the doctors and nurses, to my friends and family for seeing me to the point in the journey where CT Scans and XRays are not ordered anymore. The doctors are going to continue to check on me with my female exams and blood tests, but unless there is some weird thing going on with my body, I am “set free.”

I hope to give you all encouragement.  Whatever it takes, you can dig deep and you can survive.  You can do it!