Hi all!

This is kinda hard to write but what the hell, I'm just gonna throw it on out there and hope maybe my experience will help someone else, or give encouragement!

A few years ago I had cancer, and before I kicked the bucket I wanted to show my daughter Jamaica - well I brought her for a couple weeks and it was the most awesome experience of both our lives! She fell in love with it just like me, and from the moment she stepped into the country you'd have thought she was a local, she was very relaxed, very cool & just seemed to fit right into the culture immediately!

So, I actually recovered from that cancer bout, YAY! The next time I was afraid cancer was rearing it's head I travelled alone, stayed on the West End at a private home of a friend of mine who bought a place there to retire, and had a BLAST at her cabins! So relaxing! Yup, Jamaica is my second home, and the place I run to, when I have troubles

OK ya'll, here's the hard part. I have the Cancer again. This time, it's the last time. They've done all they could do. I am lucky enough to live in Texas, so a few hours drive and I was going to MD Anderson, the premier cancer people out there. I had two surgeries, they removed and replaced my esophagus, so I can no longer speak at all. They gave me a device to hold up to my neck to "talk", but I have had so much neck swelling that it doesn't really work, the swelling is there to stay permanently. So I carry little note pads and write a lot of notes, LOL! Cell phone is great cause I can text message, and I practically LIVE on Twitter, LOL! Actually things were going pretty good till a few months ago, the CT scan showed the cancer was back. Well, not really a surprise cause we knew I had a VERY aggressive form of this cancer. The tumor this time is right up on the caratoid artery, and there is not a dang thing they can do at this point, they've done all they could do.

But, the good news is, with Chemo I can "prolong" life. Not cure, but prolong. I do it about once a week & it's a very mild form of Chemo so normally I can do it with hardly any ill effects! Now here's a little miracle. I just had a CT Scan and it showed that the tumor had NOT gotten any bigger! OMG! So the Chemo is working way better than we imagined. The doctors had given me about 12 months life expectancy, I ended up having to go ahead and stop working because I've gotten pretty weak and wonky, but the good news is, with 17 years at the same company I had a pretty good pension fund built up, which we now live on. AND here's a neat one.... through the company life insurance with Hartford, they had something called an Accellerated Death Benefit, which if you have a terminal disease you can request up to 75 percent of your policy value! WOW! So I did that, and again this is in the coffers for us to live on, and to pass on to my daughter once I do finally kick the bucket.

OK all this being said, I actually have a great attitude, I figure there is just not much else I can do, I can cry over what's gonna happen or I can instead try to enjoy every moment of this time.... I choose to enjoy! And share my story so that hopefully I can inspire or help other people along the way. That is my biggest hope, is that I'm able to help others!

Anyhow, so here I am letting people know the story and hope to help anyone and everyone I can! I'm planning on bringing the daughter probably in June, because we have the 2 grandsons and will need to wait til they are out of school, and then they can spend the time at their Dads while me & the daughter come back "home" to Negril

We'll probably stay about 10 days to 2 weeks.

Curious if anyone else out there is facing this kind of issue, how you deal with it, advice, etc. As I said, I run to Negril when I have my problems, this will make I think the 5th or 6th trip for me, I really have lost count, LOL! Unfortunately my best friend from there passed away, he was a great friend that was AWESOME when I took Sarah (the daughter), and did all the cooking for us (he was a chef). He is going to be sorely missed when we come, but he did manage to teach me a few things so I'm a pretty fair Jamaican cook with the spices now too, LOL! My daughter has medical issues too, and he was making her and I some tea from Soursop that helped us SO much, it was awesome! And people were tickled cause we'd go forage for our food, we liked to get out early and spot us some Ackee growing - even if we found nothing, we'd meet all kinds of neat people along the way that were tickled that we were out there foraging, hee hee! My friend would get us some shrimp & fish fresh & cook it up, and our veggies from the store or the veggie truck.

Ah, memories! Can't wait to get back!

Who all else might be there in June that we could hook up with? I am about 57 yrs old, the daughter in her 30's. We are kinda low key, not into partying, but would like maybe a night at Sea Star buffet or something like that.... that singer Steven over there is AWESOME and we'd love to see him for sure!

My name is Melissa, I used to go by 3 Little Birds way back in the day on the old Negril board