Waiting to hear if the eye doctor will let him fly...
to Austin from Bangkok for a visit here soon, and if he is feeling well enough to fly and if he or I can find enough air miles for him to get a ticket so he can reserve his cash for treatment. He is a little worried he will run out of money for treatment. About a month after he started treatment for cancer with an initial prognosis from doctors on Saipan of only 3 months to live, someone asked Mark if he had enough money to live on and get treatment and he said: "If I die in two months I have too much money and if I live much longer I don't have enough." Of course he is headed into his 7th month after diagnosis.

Early this year, generous co-workers on Saipan donated him their sick time. Recently my workplace, Community Clinical Research, wired money which covered a three day chemotherapy treatment and sent him a care package too. Very early on friends on Saipan gave him money for treatment, and three of my former co-workers at ACC sent money and of course I have given him funds, and some of you reading this have sent him gifts, money, Koolaide, candy and prayers. Every one of these gift from the heart have greatly helped his spirits and his ability to stay in chemotherapy and to keep his hope up. Thank-you all.

Today I looked at the pictures (see above) I took of Mark and I sailing in the San Juan Islands in March of 2003 and pictures of him in March 2005 and I can see the toll that chemo and cancer have taken....the loss of hair...the loss of color in his skin...the loss of energy. Sometimes he looks really sick and sometimes he still looks great even today without his handsome head of wavy hair. He still has his sense of humor and can make us laugh. He still dresses up when he goes somewhere and looks as much like a G.Q. model as he can muster.

Mark is at a crossroads in which his doing radiation and continuing to do chemotherapy and all the prayers could help him get better or he could die way too young at 45. Mark yearns to have more adventures and I think that is why he continues to go for chemotherapy when it makes him so sick for days and drains him financially. I have reminded him that he has had more adventures than most people have in a lifetime and he has a lot of great memories of trips we took to various parts of Honduras and to the Moskito Coast of Nicaragua and Honduras volunteering with MEDICO, our trips to sailing schools and chartering a sailboat to go watch whales in the San Juan Islands, fishing in Cabo San Lucas and Cabo San Jose, trips to Cambodia, adventures in Thailand, Scuba diving off Roatan, and years ago when we lived in the country: riding motorcycles and camping out and shooting muzzleloading guns and throwing tomahawks at a number of National Muzzle Loading Competitions in Friendship, Indiana.

Yes, we have had a lot of adventures together and then too, he has had a lot of adventures without me; perhaps adventures with some of you who are reading this.

I hope Mark has many more adventures and I am ready to help him plan another adventure soon. One of his expressions when we get into a tight spot or a strange situation when we are off the beaten path is: "and the adventure continues." And so it does.

Contact MissBettythemom at bkrich@sbcglobal.net if you want to send Mark a postcard from somewhere in the world or you want to send him some sour candy or send a small contribution to help with chemo or to buy ice cream.