Hello from Lynda:

I thank God for the Mayo Clinic and the opportunity I have of being treated at this fine facility. With these skilled doctors doing the work and God doing the healing, how can I lose?

As you've learned, the first order of treatment is a double mastectomy. They tried to get me to surgery sooner, but it seems that Nov. 3rd will be my surgery date. As a result of the wait, I'm home resting. This week I have doctor appointments on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. These appointments are not directly related to my cancer so I plan to reschedule them tomorrow. John and I plan to start back to Mayo's on Saturday.

I can already see that cancer is a family affair and I ask you to pray for my wonderful family. They have put their activities on hold in order to help me. We are so thankful for our special son-in-law, Eric, who drove us to and from the Mayo Clinic. We will ever be grateful for his kindness and patience as he tried to teach the country people how to act in the big city. As soon as we arrived, we decided to eat before the restaurants closed. The waitress said, "The men sound fine but where did you come from? You sound like you're from the south." I guess I needed a speech lesson before I left Carmi.

On the second day, Eric allowed us to venture out on our own. Here are some things we learned. The first lessons were about the elevators. You have to put your room key card in the elevator before you push the floor number. Don't panic if it doesn't work - you can just ride up and down, up and down. Someone will finally get on (who knows how to use their card) and push the button to your floor. Those elevators had a lot of options. We were coming down from an appointment and started reading the down options. One option said 'Subway'. I'm always thinking about food and wondered how that restaurant got its own button on the elevator. About that time John said, "Don't push that button. I don't know how to ride the Subway." The next day someone told us we could walk in this beautiful underground tunnel. We pushed 'Subway' and only had to walk a short distance to our room. (Amazing!)

We had a beautiful room at the Kahler Hotel. I immediately noticed large fancy bottles of water with fancy little tags on them. John said, "Don't drink the water. It says $2.50 on the tag. The water part is true (maybe I'm exaggerating a little now)......When we started to check out, John noticed they had charged us for the water. John said, "How can you charge us for water? We didn't open it?" The manager said, "It's not my fault you didn't drink it. It was there in the room." John picked up the bill and subtracted $150 from it. The manager said, "What are you doing?" John said, "I'm charging you $50 a day for kissing my wife." The manager said, "I didn't kiss your wife." John replied, "That's not my fault. She was there in the room." So much for my nonsense.....

I want to thank all of you for your love and support. Your prayers are appreciated more than you can imagine. The prayers, cards, scripture, and words of comfort lift me up, renew my faith, and give me the determination to win this battle. We love you!! Lynda & John