"Man Plans..."

My very good friend Bonnie told me that her mother used to say, "Man plans; God laughs."  In the past month, Rick and I have found that saying to be so very true. We can have all the plans in the world, but if that is not what God has in mind, those plans are all for naught. We know who is really in charge.

Our original plans for returning to Florida and for continuing our remodeling of Gladys meant leaving on October 25.  We had lofty ambitions: purchase new living room furniture; power-wash, prime, and paint the outside of the house; install shutters; add stone around the foundation of the house; select, paint, and hang seven interior doors; remove the leaning oak in the back yard; remove the north fence; install a new white vinyl fence; replace the front patio blocks with a new paver sidewalk, and perhaps (phew!) have a cement lanai patio slab poured in the back yard.  We had arranged for financing of all of the above -- we hope -- and were eager to begin.

Such plans!  However, since approximately last February, we both had noticed subtle changes in me.  I started having slight problems swallowing some types of food.  Then I noticed achey muscles and fatigue.  This was followed all summer with progressive weakness, more pain, and even greater fatigue.  By the end of the summer I had seen three doctors in Wisconsin.  The third, my regular doctor, said that I might have a condition called "polymyositis."  He advised me to see a local rheumatologist for treatment.  Stephanie, our daughter, urged us to get an appointment at Mayo Clinic to have the diagnosis confirmed.

Instead of leaving for Florida, we took a detour to Rochester, Minnesota.  Fourteen days and over 22 tests/ consultations later, I had a confirmed diagnosis.  I have a rare (read 10 people in 1 million!) condition called "dermatomyositis" and "mixed connective tissue disease." Basically, my autoimmune system is attacking my muscles, leaving me with muscle and nerve damage, weakness, and extreme fatigue. There is no cure, but I can be treated with medication.  I am now on that medication which has some nasty side-effects, but it is worth them to slowly regain my quality of life.  I can now move, for the most part, without pain.  I have regained some of my energy although not my stamina yet.  Rebuilding muscles, restoring nerves, gaining strength, and increasing my energy level will not happen overnight.  Some people take over two years to get back to "near normal."

Throughout this all, the love, concern, and prayers of my family, beloved friends, neighbors, and pastor all have helped us both endure this detour in our life plans.  I told Rick, "We were headed down the road with a clear goal in sight, and then suddenly we were forced to turn a corner.  Now we have to chart a new course and find a new path to get back to those same goals."

Our trip today is the first part of that new course. Although our youngest daughter did not want us to go, I will not let this condition totally destroy our plans.  We watched an inch of snow fall while we were still in Minnesota, so we knew that if we were going to drive our truck back down to Florida, we had a very limited window of opportunity before weather would make such a venture either dangerous or impossible.  The weather forecast for Wisconsin showed that we had one clear day this week -- today -- to get out of the state before another rain/ snow mix was headed for the state.

After an almost sleepless night (insomnia is one of the side effects of the medication I am taking), I got up with Rick at 5:00 a.m.  I am too weak and tired to drive safely, so we knew that Rick would have to do all of the driving.  We normally take two days to get to Gladys; this trip is planned to span three to four days since we did not know how I would travel or how tired Rick would be doing all of the driving.

The day dawned clear, and we had beautiful sunny weather all day.  The weather was cold.  We noted frost on the roofs of the houses both in Wisconsin and in northern Illinois.  Traffic, even at 5:30 in the morning, was incredibly heavy, so the drive through Milwaukee and Chicago was pretty tense.

As we drove through the east-central part of Illinois, we noted an area that gave testament to the monster tornadoes that ravaged the state earlier this week.  These rare November tornadoes destroyed whole sections of towns and resulted in eight deaths.  At one point, we passed a farm where the barn was intact but the house was leveled.  The fields around the area were littered with huge pieces of twisted metal, roofing, boards, and other storm-tossed debris. Suddenly our little shattered plans were rather insignificant in thinking about what thousands of newly-homeless people now face.

We pushed a little further than we originally anticipated, arriving at Mount Vernon, IL, a little after 2:30 p.m.  We had stopped earlier for a hot lunch, so that gave us enough energy to do the last hour of driving.  When we arrived, Rick went to fill the truck with gas while I crawled onto the bed.  I was exhausted.  I planned (there is that word again!) on taking a short nap; incredibly, I woke up almost two hours later.

We are in for the night.  We'll have a light dinner in our room, relax, review the maps for tomorrow, and see what happens in the morning.  While we will set an alarm, if we awake earlier, we may leave earlier.  If not, we will take the day as it comes. The weather reports tonight show that rain/ snow are forecast for the upper Midwest, so the further south we go, the better we will feel about avoiding dangerous winter weather.  We hope to stay tomorrow night in a hotel in mid-Alabama, arriving in Florida on Thursday and at Gladys on Thursday or Friday.

That's the plan at least.