Women with Cancer: The Inequality among us

Herein lies the great divide between the haves and the have nots.

I found this blog post by cancer advocate "Jody" pretty enlightening.
Women with Cancer: Health care: IRL

Christmas Greetings

Dear Friends and Family, Hard to believe 2011 has flown by and here we are in the midst of another Christmas Season, although we’re sure by the time you get this…its more likely to be 2012. We hope that this Christmas season finds your homes filled family laughter, love, and the Spirit of Christmas! The biggest change for 2011 is that we are officially “Empty Nesters” as of August. It seems like just yesterday we had four kids under five years old and our lives were full of diapers, sippy cups and endless hours of Barney and Sesame Street. Move that forward 18 years and we find ourselves with one college graduate and three in college--now that is superb planning! Kyle has successfully made the transition from college student to independent living as a project manager for a financial services company in Charlottesville. He’s only two hours away so we do see him fairly frequently. He started dating a beautiful young lady from Cincinnati, OH , a grad student at UVA. She goes by “Lexie”. They enjoy wine tasting and music, as well as Kyle’s 18 month-old -massive 150 pound English Mastiff puppy, Porter, the "gentle giant". Curtis will graduate with a mechanical engineering degree from University of Virginia in May. He and Kyle live a couple of miles apart and are able to get together on occasion which is nice. He is in the early stages of active job hunting. He’s been fortunate to have had several solid engineering internships with the Department of Defense which he’s hoping to parlay into a job with either one of the larger defense firms or with the government. He is president of his Christian acapella group which released another CD this year. Curt and Rachael just celebrated 4 years of dating this fall. Keith is in his second year at James Madison University (JMU)—the same school Kyle attended and loves it. He also is an Engineering major and is in Air Force ROTC. Keith also is involved with college acapella, and has become the primary “Beat Boxer”, providing vocal percussion for The Madison Project. Keith had an engineering internship last summer with the Dulles Airport Authority and really enjoyed it. Keith is a Belltower Books manager on the JMU campus, and is looking into summer internships in the engineering field for summertime. He and his girlfriend, Sarah, a longtime family friend, have been dating almost 2 years. Kelli is a freshman vocal performance and music education major, also at JMU. She is adjusting well to dorm life with her high school friend roommate, and has amassed dozens of new friends within just a few short weeks. In addition to her rigorous music classes, Kelli is performing with The BluesTones acapella group and thoroughly enjoys the stage. She also helps to lead music in the college church worship team. Kelli works at Panera Bread Company on her holiday and summer breaks, and sells and buys books with Belltower Book company on her college campus during the school year. She and Keith get home every few weeks a visit here, but their absence has left our home very quiet since the start of the semester. Koryn moved out of her closet art/work area this year, and into Kyle’s old bedroom-turned-studio where she stamps out handmade creations most days. Her business, The Taffy Box, has grown exponentially this year, which I’m afraid may end up costing more in taxes as a home business than we realize! Still, the success and growth has allowed for more travel to visit out-of-state family. In 2012 she plans a trip to Hong Kong to visit her good friend who recently moved there, and Seattle where a long-time friend now resides. Owning her own business makes vacation time unlimited! Her health has remained steady with a few bumps along the way, as life after cancer treatments can take its toll, but things are A-okay for which we are blessed and grateful! Tim continues to work for the government as civilian at the Pentagon. He works on the acquisition of some of the military’s unmanned aircraft systems, many of which you hear about in the news. While Tim enjoys his “play” time, whether it be fishing, running, tennis or golf, this year has NOT been a marquee year. In May, Tim developed a very rare neuro-muscular disease called Parsonage Turner Syndrome (Neuralgic Amyotrophy) which left his left shoulder partially paralyzed and both arms and hands in various stages of profound weakness and paralysis and pain. He’s been doing physical and occupational therapy 3-4 times a week and has made some improvement. He’s a little more functional than he was during the summer. His doctors have said the progress is encouraging but to expect a 2-5 year recovery. Once he recovers, he figures it’s a good excuse to start over learning how to play golf! All in all, it’s been quite humbling, but he is grateful for progress and the prayers of friends and family. Once again, we know and feel God’s grace through tough circumstances, and we grow in our faith in a deeper way. We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in November and we will take a trip to Sandals St Lucia (an island in the Carribean) in March. Despite living and travelling around the world with the Air Force, we’ve never been to the Caribbean, so we are excited. Tim hopes to scuba dive again…we’ll see. In closing, we hope you have a Merry Christmas season and experience its joy through times spent with family and friends. We look forward to hearing from you or even better…a visit! We have 4 empty beds now! Tim & Koryn Kyle, Curtis, Keith and Kelli Hutchison