2012, Year of the Water Dragon

2012 is characterized by the Dragon and the element of water.  It is considered to be a year of new beginnings and mixed blessings.  In Chinese and Tibetan astrology, each year alternates between yin and yang.  We are ending the year of the Iron Rabbit which was a yin year. The energy was focused on taking care of past and current situations.  The Iron Rabbit was more about working through difficulties that had already begun in 2010, the year of Iron Tiger.   However, 2012 is a yang year and will be much more active and forward moving than the yin of the Iron Rabbit.  We can expect more excitement and unpredictability in the year of the Water Dragon.


To say the least in my life.  Besides the heart attack in 2008, Kim was in flux with her job situations and finding a place to live that worked for us.  2010/2011 was the year of the moving van .  
We moved our household to 4 different cities between the months of Sept 2010 thru October 2011.  We came down off the mountain to the Charlotte area and lived in 2 different homes we lease optioned to buy but didn't.  We moved across the state of NC east of Durham to some hell hole of a little town at the height of summer for a new Kim job.  We lasted in Oxford, NC 4 months, thank God, for Kim was head hunted by the same library system 15 minutes from our old home in the mountains. Move number 4 on December 18th in the winter in the mountains.  Hopefully you get "my drift", no pun intended, on the move back but that a drift was literally part of this move back, as well as an icy covered road up a hill that the moving van guys refused to drive on to get my shit off their truck.  It was an interesting sparsely furnished Christmas in the mountains. 
I should start a completely different writing on the highs and lows of moving, but for now I am trying to focus on the cancer thing so I won't digress.


2012, Year of the Water Dragon.  Could be an omen.  I'm a Virgo.  Virgo is a water symbol.  This could be good! February, I was cleared by my Cardiologist and given 2 thumbs up for what ever I was doing and keep up the good work.  My heart was doing fine.  Whoo Hoo!  Back to wearing the "Life is Good" tee shirt.


Skip on to the beginning of May.  Now some of you were working with me in Washington DC the first week in May.  You saw first hand on the next malady to happen to me.  While in DC, I can down with a viral infection of my right parotid gland (Salivary Gland to all laymen out there).  Sucker swelled up to the size of a handball.  It was not a pretty site.  So on a day after we had finished early, I hopped a cab and went to the closest walk in clinic to the hotel.  The doctor I saw could have been Bill Cosby's brother, dry humor and a non stop talker. (I suppose he was sort of bored, I was the only patient).  He examined me, thoroughly questioned my personal history and work related travel history for the past 3 years.  I truly thought he had found the next mystery plague in my body that would be named after him, make tons of $$$'s, and get him out of his deadend job as a walkin clinic doctor.  Then reality struck, brought him back, and came up with a prescription of antibiotics. He then
told me that he had also found some other smaller lumps in the lymph glands on the left side of my neck.  If the antibiotics didn't help reduce these lumps as well, for they may be part of the viral infection of my parotid, that I should go see my primary doctor when I got home to check on them as well as the parotid.  2 weeks later, I'm home.  Parotid swelling has decreased to almost normal size.  Lymph glands, not so much.