Over the past three weeks my wife and I have been dealing with the following medical problem: First, an anomaly turned up in her regular mammogram, and so a second mammogram and a sonogram were scheduled. When the results of these were not good, a biopsy was done last Friday, which showed the tumor to be cancerous. It appears to be highly treatable, though we won’t know for sure until further surgery is performed and the lymph nodes are checked out. But in any event, this will of course continue to place severe time constraints on my ability to post here.
Because my wife has been caring for her 92-year-old mother in our home for the past three years, and because she is also the trustee for her mother’s estate, there may be a host of complicated family matters to take care of in the near future. And in addition to all of that, I have fallen well behind on some of my own writing projects, which are pretty much suspended right now. So even though I do not plan to disappear from this site altogether, the number of conversations in which I can engage will be limited. I have always found it difficult to engage in more than one conversation at a time anyway, and so, quite apart from recent events, I have found it difficult to respond to every question and every comment directed at me here. So here is my proposal. If Glenn Peoples finds the time to continue our conversation, as I hope he does and as he has indicated that he intends to do, I will concentrate on that as my primary conversation here. Beyond that, I will try to make other contributions periodically, but with no guarantee of either thoroughness or completeness.
Finally, I do hope that no one will interpret silence on my part as a lack of interest in a particular question, comment, or topic. For, more often than not, external factors and even sheer chance in many cases will dictate when and where I respond. You may rest assured, however, that I remain most grateful to everyone who has contributed to the discussions on this board.
-Tom