For some reason the saying that truth is stranger than fiction is stuck in my head. I decided to continue our story because I really don’t think I could make it up any better. We find ourselves in Hannibal Missouri. Bells should be going off in your head about now. I’m sure you all had visions of Huckleberry Finn running through your heads instantly, because everyone know that none other that Mark Twain called Hannibal home. It just so happens that he wrote the saying at the beginning also. I won’t lie. I just found that out when I googled it, but hey, it definitely fits for sure now. So I am going to channel the master of story telling and with and try to relay the rest of our mighty tale. Sorry upfront for all of the spelling and punctuation errors, it will become obvious to you why my brain is not working so swell.

I think when I left off we were back at the hotel room snuggled in to watch an awesome football game on the interweb (Yea SES). We brought Gino’s East pizza on our way home and had stuffed ourselves and were feeling quite fat and happy. My cousin Shad and his wife Maggie Thaxton had come over and we had a nice visit while we watched the game. they left around 11:00 pm and everything was good. Tammy settling in to bed and me just doing what I do at night. Then, our journey began with three nice wholesome sneezes. Hachoo, hachoo, hachoo, wow, those kind of hurt. Fast forward 20 minutes, we have to go. I hurt really bad, and I can’t get a full breath. Ok Honey, we are out of here. Now some of you might know the magnificent mile of downtown Chicago, some of you just imagine with me. It is one a.m. on a Friday night in downtown Chicago, we are about five blocks from the hospital. Our car just happens to be in Wichita Kansas, its cold outside and Tammy can’t catch her breath so walking is out. Oh, and by the way, we have no idea where the ER is. So what does one do in such circumstances, hale a cab of course. Lucky us, one just happened to be going by. He pulled up and I went, Oh boy. Please take us to the ER of Northwestern University. Now under normal circumstances I would not have batted and eye about this, but as we were sitting in the cab on a fast and bumpy ride to the ER, my thought was. I wonder how many times on a Friday night has this guy picked up two people running out of a hotel, screaming for a cab, and saying get us to the ER stat. Boy I’m sure he has some stories to tell about that. I will leave that to your imagination to fill in those blanks.

We pull up to the doors and are greeted with a man across the street screaming at the top of his lungs at what must have been an invisible bull frog standing next to him.  Ok let’s get inside please.  Ok let me get the door for you dear. In we go and are greeted by a very drunk Pharrel wanna a be complete with hat. They had propped him in a wheel chair for safe keeping. They nurse at the desk was asking him if he was allergic to anything. He was mumbling something and I quietly told the nurse, “I think you should put down alcohol” to which I got a small smile out of her. We told her why we were there and promptly got put at the front of the line and were in the back in room in fifteen flat, away from the drunks weirdos and such. uh huh, that’s what we thought. So off to x-ray Tammy goes, back in five, In the bed she goes, the nurse comes and so here we are. One thirty in the morning, downtown Chicago, in the ER, oh ya it’s also Friday night. So after they get the guy standing in the hall with his sheet wrapped around him and nothing else on, screaming “give me my pants back,” back in his room. The Doc comes in, nothing has changed in your lung. oxygen level in blood still good. Lets try to manage you pain, and maybe breathing will be easier. They give her some pain meds through and IV ,she settles down, breathing goes back to normal. All good in the world, and its six a.m. in the morning. We need to start to drive to Kansas today. Oh did I mention that by the time I got our flights cancelled and Tammy settled in for the night, all of the rental car places were closed. I still don’t got any wheels set up yet. Oh well, another short cab ride to hotel. I got to get some sleep. Seven a.m. in bed falling fast asleep.

Fast Forward: Ten a.m., frantically calling every rent-a-car place within downtown. Who would of thought, places that rent cars, actually don’t have cars to rent. So instead of a short walk to a rental car we take a nice cab ride to the airport that we can’t fly out of to get a car from New Jersey that we are taking to Kansas, with a short overnight stop in Hannibal. Did I mention that a famous writer was from there. Any way, before we could leave I had to walk to Walgreen and fill a prescription for pain meds for Tammy to make it home, and check out before twelve noon. 12:05 I hand them the keys and we are gone. It just so happens that the one cab in all of Chicago that has a Doctor as the driver picked us up. He is from Nigeria and is trying to retake all of the tests to become licensed here. Very interesting conversation, time flies and the meter keeps on running. We have arrived! $580.00 we have a car and we are on our way. Made really good time except for the one or two or seven potty breaks for me because I drank one or two or seven cups of coffee. And now, Holiday Inn Express I love ya. Here we are, you and me sitting around telling stories.

Thanks for indulging me by reading all of this. All of this did happen in the last eighteen or so hours. At some point every bad experience just becomes funny because there is really nothing else we can do besides laugh. Tammy is feeling much better and traveled pretty good today. She has a little allergy to the pain meds they prescribed so she does a chaser of Benadryl when she takes one. It knocks he out so it was a pretty quiet day. We hear a lot about what cancer takes away from us, but sometimes you have to keep it in perspective. I know I talk about that a lot, but in all our lives it is so important. How we view and react to what happens in our lives has a direct relationship to how happy we are in this life. Cancer sucks, but it has forced Tammy and I to do things that we would have never done if she didn’t have it. This week was crazy, but we made some memories that I will never forget. Who knows, we still have six hours of driving to go from Hannibal, this story may not be over yet. Oh ya, did I mention that someone very famous was from here.

Love you all. Thanks for all of the thoughts and prayers this week.