Where did I go?
I want to thank everyone that has contacted me and asked when the next story would be out or where I went. I made some inferences to health problems in the last chapter, so I better explain.
In April (2015) I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The first week of June I had a prostatectomy. I had told my doctor that I thought I was a little young for prostate cancer, but he said unfortunately not. The biopsy before the surgery showed that it was rather advanced and moderately aggressive. The decision was made to remove it and surrounding tissue then wait and see what the biopsy showed. After eight weeks the doctor informed me that it appeared they got all the cancer during surgery and follow-up radiation may not be needed.
They have some new genetic tests now they can run on the biopsied tissue to see if you are at high risk of the cancer returning and my doctor was afraid I would be due to the nature of the progression and the pre-surgical biopsy, so I had the test run. About a month later the doctor called and said the results of the genetic test showed that I was actually at low risk of the cancer returning. Based on that and my negative first PSA test we decided against any follow-up radiation and everything looks good for now.
Getting through knowing you have cancer and waiting for all the follow-ups is a mentally tasking thing. I got out the last chapter during that time but have just not be able to finish the next ones. I have many more chapters for LATL in the works, so there is no chance of running out of further chapters for a long time!
During the two years prior to the cancer I had been developing some continuing arm and shoulder pain that I was told was related to a car wreck from about 10 years earlier. So despite getting through all the pain from the prostate removal I was still in pain in my arms and shoulders and the problem was getting worse and keeping me from writing or doing much of anything else.
In October I was told that I needed to have two vertebrae in my lower neck fused because the disc was collapsing. The first week of November I developed some issues with the neck and the bad disc and I had to have a posterior cervical fusion performed. This is a rather painful surgery with a painful recovery. It has been a very painful thing for me. I had to have several doctors confer that I was healthy enough from the surgery in June to have the cervical fusion performed, but it got to a point I didn't have a choice.
So you can see that I have been through a lot since April. I am slowly getting my act back together, but between still recovering from the prostate cancer scare and surgery and now this neck surgery, I am recovering slowly. The two surgeries and recovery have left me with several annoying side effects. I hope that by early January I will get the next part of the trip with Linda posted, I work on it a little on and off. But don't worry, if it is not up by then it will be posted as soon as I can get it finished and proofed. When it's ready and posted I will have this post taken down and continue the series.
Some of what is holding me up is just not getting into writing about LATL. I have started about six new stories that are unrelated to the LATL series just so I would keep busy. You see, after almost six months after the prostate removal I am still quite impotent and the doctors are trying different things. It affects my motivation to write a little. The doctor says he preserved the nerves for getting an erection, but it may take one to two years for everything to start working again. That along with some bladder and internal issues have been hard recovering from.
