Fighting Breast Cancer

Why, yes I do!  Me!

My parents are buying their first home in over 25 years.  Since they are a little out of practice I am going to use my expertise in the field of lending money and dealing with purchase contracts so that I can shamelessly promote myself in my blog.  And, make sure that they are getting the best possible deal on their mortgage (naturally).

Michael and I own a branch of Arizona Wholesale Mortgage.  We have been with AZ Wholesale Mortgage since about 2002.  We are a very reputable company–we never bait and switch our clients–and we donate $200 to Breast Cancer Charities for every loan we close.  We are also proud members of The Better Business Bureau with a clean history of zero complaints.  If you are planning on buying or refinancing a home in AZ, be it through FHA, VA or conventional, please call me for a quote!  877-551-8188 x 1

Michael and I joined my mom and dad in looking at the property.  Sure enough, it was located about six miles from my home in a gated community on a golf course.  There is a three story club house with a restaurant, bar, ball room, library, billiards room and more.  There are several heated pools throughout the complex as well.  It even has it’s own post office. 

The home itself is modest, but very cozy.  The seller, Marilyn, is moving to Florida and she was leaving the house furnished, so my parents won’t have to spend too much money to move in.  The master bedroom has a walk in closet and there are plantation shutters in the windows.  It even has a screened in patio in back. 

Personally, I fell right in love with the place.  Michael did, too.  It has very high ceilings that make the home seem larger and more grand than it really is.  I know that my parents will make improvements but I can already envision them living here.  I can tell my mother is thinking the same thing. 

My mom just looked around the place as if she were thinking how perfect it is.  It’s small enough for her to maintain and it’s also close enough to my house so that she can zip over to see me any time she wants.  Or, I can zip over to see her for that matter.  Oh, yeah.  I can tell she wants it.

Marilyn, the seller, was there as we were viewing the home.  She said that she had an investor from California who was interested in buying the home, but she indicated that she would rather sell it to us. 

This evening, my parents made an offer and it was accepted.  The close of escrow is in one month!

About a year before I was diagnosed with cancer, I took a trip to Michigan to see my family.  Arizona was experiencing the beginnings of its real estate boom and I was eager to tell my parents that they should invest.

I knew that they had been thinking of buying a second home.  They had been looking at houses in the Carolina’s and Florida but hadn’t found anything in their price range.  When I suggested Arizona, my mother immediately said that she knew that she would not like the desert climate and that everything is “too brown”.  I knew she was wrong and I knew that Arizona would be perfect for them, but at that time, my mother said that she would never fly again and that the drive from Michigan was too long. 

Of course that all changed when her baby was diagnosed with cancer.

This morning I called one of the real estate agents that I work with and asked him to email me some properties for my parents to look at.  Now that my mother has seen Arizona she has expressed how much she likes it here.  The agent emailed me a list of homes and I showed them to my parents. 

My dad widdled the list down to 10 properties.  I made an appointment for my dad to go looking with the agent.  My mother chose to stay behind and have my dad do all the leg work.

A few hours later he returned with a grin on his face.  “I think I found something that you should take a look at,” he told my mother.

I couldn’t believe it!  My dad actually looked excited!  My mom was a little skeptical, but she agreed to take a look at the property the following evening.  I looked at the description of the house that my dad was interested in.  It looked so cute!  It was a 2 bedroom/2 bath home with 1.5 car garage.  The perfect size for a car and golf cart.  It was in a gated retirement community on a golf course about 6 miles from my house.  It was perfect. 

I’m pretty excited for my parents, but a bid has already been placed on the house.  The seller has not accepted it yet.  She said that she would wait to see if my parents wish to bid on it before she makes her decision. 

Chemotherapy drugs are very powerful.  They do things to my mind that I’ve never experienced before.  Like hallucinating. 

I take that back.  Once when I was 22 I was driving home at 3:30 am from my job as a bartender.  It had been the busiest weekend of the year for bars and restaurants (Thanksgiving Weekend) and I had worked three double shifts in a row.  I hadn’t slept more than 4 hours per night the last three nights.  I was exhausted.

Anyway, while driving home I kept hallucinating out of the corner of my left eye that Ghandi was running along side my truck.  His white robes were flowing behind him and he was barefoot.  As I cruised along at 45 mph, the only thing that I could think was, “Damn!  Ghandi can run!”  I shook my head and looked over and he was gone.  It then dawned on me that Ghandi was not a faster-than-a-speeding-bullet-superhero guiding me home.  In fact, he was quite dead.  And, for those skeptics out there:  No I was not drinking and I’ve never done drugs.  It just so happens that when I’m extremely tired, my mind hallucinates great historic figures of peace with super-human abilities.

That is until I started chemo.   With chemo I feel like I’m taking a trip in one of Hunter S. Thompson’s novels.  Sometimes I’ll think I’m seeing bugs crawling in my peripheral vision.  Sometimes I’ll see some sort of movement from an object that hasn’t moved.  It’s so strange. 

It has really effected my memory, as well.  I just finished the book “High Fidelity” by Nick Hornby and I honestly can’t tell you anything about it.  I know that it’s about a guy who owns a record store in London, but I’ve completely forgotten the main plot and characters.  This is dreadful.

I just hope that these mind tricks subside once I’m done with chemo.