Turning the Page

I’ve been overwhelmed with all the wonderful support and encouragement from readers in dealing with my cancer issue. Thank you all.

When we received the diagnosis, we opted for an aggressive form of treatment with chemo and radiation that has a 98% probability of a cure. The other alternative had fewer side effects but drops the odds to 88%.

After discussing expectations, side effects and all the factors involved we realized the important thing was to get the cancer out of my body.

That was ten weeks ago. Today my body is slowly healing. During that time, I spent a lot of time in a chair – just thinking about life. Our recent article, The Most Important Job Of Parenting No One Discusses received the most positive feedback of any article we have published.

The treatment was much more difficult than I ever imagined. I ended the article with a quote from the movie Rocky, “Ain’t gonna be no rematch!” Before we started treatment the oncologist said, “We have one shot, gotta get it the first time!”

I now understand the doctors go after the cancer first and foremost. The treatment is tough and may harm other parts of your body in the process. Once the treatment is finished, some things will heal normally and others will not; and require a lot of work and rehab on the part of the patient.

My guess is they will have achieved the goal with the cancer, and now we have to go back, working hard to recover the quality of life we had before the treatment. I have some challenges ahead.

Assessing the situation

This summer marks the fourth year we have published our newsletter. It is an expensive hobby, but a labor of love. Some readers have asked about cost. Each year it cost me around $6,000, after all the help we get from readers, to publish our weekly articles.

While some may say that is silly, I compared it to the cost of our boating hobby, motor home hobby, and target shooting. Spending $6,000+ doing something that I loved and occupied my time was much less expensive. I am grateful for being able to do so – and a wife that was totally supportive.

Turning the page

I’m now in my 80^th lap around the sun, a major milestone. There came a time when we realized we needed to sell the boats, sell the motor home and no need to go shooting 3-4 days a week. In each case, the decision was not made for purely financial reasons; but rather for how we needed to allocate our time.

While I love writing and interacting with all of our readers, I have decided to turn the page and temporarily suspend writing Miller on The Money weekly articles.

The rest of my summer will require my time and energy doing rehab to get back to normal. How long the rehab takes, and what things will look like in the future is all unknown at this time. Being able to write again is part of getting my life back.

It’s been a fun time getting to know many of our readers personally. I hope that sharing my life insights and experiences has been of value.

For the time being, I must sign off. The website will remain open for business. Feel free to forward past articles to your friends and family.

Hug your loved ones, and enjoy each and every day.

Dennis