Each week, as a rule, I look back for a year to see what I've written about. If it's fairly good, if worse comes to worse, I could use the same article again, since I'm sure no one remembers what it was about.

Almost every week, someone will say to me, "I really liked your article,” or "I certainly didn't agree with you last week."

Since a week later, I don't remember, or know which article the reader if referring to, I usually ask. If they agree, I thank them. Even an old dog likes a pat on the head once in a while. If they don't agree with me, my stock answer is, "I sleep with a woman every night that doesn't always agree with me. We discuss it and agree to disagree."

Last year about this time, I was writing about "It's good to have something to hurt.” It was about my first wife's toe cutting operation, and her hurting the foot and fussing about it, until she saw a woman without a foot to hurt.

This hasn't been too good a health year for the Toole house.

Betty Jo had her foot operated on, so she could keep walking. She had one toe amputated and put back on. From that she had a blood clot and was put on rat poison. This, we think, was the start of her troubles.

Later, Betty Jo got sick with bronchitis that ran into pneumonia. The doctors gave her mega doses of antibiotics that gave her c-diff, which almost killed her. Her many doctors said she should begin feeling like a human again in about six months after she surprised us all and didn’t die.

At the same time, our youngest daughter, Donna, had a relapse of heart problems. The only treatment is to stop the heart, and shock, 400 volts, back into the stopped heart to bring her back. She has had this done multiple times.

The next thing, our oldest daughter, Tammy, by chance, found that she had stage three ovarian cancer and had everything that she could do without taken out. She is a little over half finished with her chemo.

We have also had the privilege of having my favorite mother-in-law, Uva, living with us. At 96 years young, she does have a few things going wrong, like she can't walk too well because of dizziness caused by too many antibiotics and has to be taken anywhere she goes, and she goes, and last week, she had her left little toe cut off. The surgeon didn't cut the one off that hurt her all the time. I guess he is saving that for another time. She still works at the office when she has something to do, goes to the Senior Center everyday they open and to her church every Sunday. She is a joy to be a part of our home, and is still walking with her threewheeler and nine toes.

All this time, I've been doing fine. Other than having hypertension, diabetes, a few melanoma cancers cut out of me, a host of basal cell cancers cut off and a bucket full of them frozen off that could have been cancers. I usually get to work six and one-half days a week, and try to put in my usual 60 or 70 hours. I must admit, my priorities changed when my folks got deathly ill the first half of this year. If I hadn’t been the boss, I would have been replaced. I’ve got good help.

The girls kept wanting me to get checked, and I kept asking them if they find more wrong with me, who's going to drive the sick to and from the hospitals? They finally got me to go to the skin doctor about a month ago. She made me strip down to my briefs and gave me a prescription to put on my old, sun-damaged arms and hands. I didn't see a thing wrong with them until I put the cream on for about two and a half weeks. I have been whipped, cut, and bad sick for weeks, but I can't ever remember hurting as bad, or as long as those tubes of cream made me hurt. When Tammy called the doctor last week and made an appointment for me to go let her see me, both arms felt like they were in fire ant beds, all the time. When the doctor saw them, she said, "Better quit putting on the cream."

I had already made that decision.

All my problems are possibly and probably my fault. If I had known I was going to make it this far, I would have taken better care of myself. With my folks all getting so sick, I made some real deals with my Lord, and I hope He took me up on several of them, like putting their ills and hurts on me. I asked, and begged for their healing, but I believe you must give to receive.

We are all doing good, for the shape that we are in. God is good, all the time.