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Home > Archive: October, 2017

Archive for October, 2017

Why yes, I am still alive!

October 5th, 2017 at 02:10 pm

Oh my gosh, I've been gone forever!

I hope I didn't worry anyone, given my horrific summer of surprise cancer and surgery. Alas, I have survived, and I am back to normal, like nothing happened at all. Moving, running, working out, all of it.

(Except I managed to pull an ab muscle, so I'm sitting here with a heating pad, but hey. I'll take it.)

It's almost surreal. Other than a few tiny scars, no one would know anything happened to me at all. In fact, most people-- apart from you guys and my very close friends and family-- don't know!

Since it was a quick cancer with a surgery and no chemo, I opted not to share the news with everyone (you know, parents at school, social only friends, etc.) because I didn't want them to think of me as sickly or to treat me differently. I didn't want them to worry about me, unless there was something real to worry about.

So yeah. That's good. It still blows my mind, though.

I guess the good news is that I haven't been here as much because I was

A. Finishing my 4th novel. (woot!) I managed to write it and finish a 70k word urban fantasy novel over the summer, despite the kids being out of school and being out for a month recovering from surgery. I still don't know how I did it!

B. Editing my 2nd novel and getting it ready to release on Nov. 15.
C. Working on random author stuff, like getting out there and connecting with readers who might like my stuff.

Financially, the medical bills played out in the best case scenario. I waited all summer for a big bill to come, but it didn't. My biggest expenses were the copays for my ER visit, and for my surgery, which were about $1500 up front.

I paid about $3000 out of pocket for everything, and the bills came just far enough apart that I was able to pay them out of pocket instead of dipping into savings. So that was a huge relief.

Of course, that meant I was not able to put money back into savings to replace the 9,000 we spent on a roof right before I went into the hospital. Sigh. But, I am plugging away at that, putting about $700 a month back into it. And just hoping that I will still be cancer free when I go in for a CT scan in January.

So yeah. I missed y'all!