AUSTRALIA: ON OUR BUCKET LIST

Yes, Joe and Bonnie will be off to Down Under, the great country of Australia, which is one of our dreams for a long time. Since we are traveling to the other side of this marvelous earth, we will also have some visits to Southeast Asia which was not on our bucket list. There are some Evans' stories as to "why this trip" thus my first posting will tell you the background.

Joe and I dated for seventeen years before we got married in 1992 and marriage was never discussed. There was not an even, "I love you." On Friday, March 13, 1992 Joe and I were at Bambinelli's having an Italian dinner. Joe starts talking about Australia and that his employer, Bell South, has some job openings there. He knew that my employer, Household Finance Corporation, also had loan branches in Australia. He stated that we should both request transfers with our employers and move to Australia, I looked at him as if he had lost his mind. I stated, " I can not moved to Australia with you." Joe replies, "Why not?" "You can not move to a foreign country and not be married!" He says in all seriousness, "Well, then, we will just get married." I laughed and thought maybe the wine had gone to his head.

I was reading the Atlanta Journal on the living room couch on Saturday morning as Joe continued to sleep. He comes downstairs and sits real close to me, puts his arm around me. "Well, when are we getting married?" I laughed for at least fifteen minutes but Joe just sat there and he was serious. So, we got married on June 13, 1992 BUT we never made it to Australia!

The last fifteen years Joe developed several incurable diseases. His first one was polycythemia vera (PV) diagnosed in 1997. PV caused Joe to produce too much blood. Unfortunately Joe progressed into the more serious stage to myelofibrosis in 2008 where his bone marrow does not produce enough healthy blood cells. Research showed that he would live another 3-5 years. Joe wanted to have a good quality of life in the time he had left. There was a clinical trial in Houston, Texas at M D Anderson Cancer Center, the top rated cancer center in the world. The INCYTE trial would not cure the myelofribosis but it would stop Joe's fatigue, drenching sweats, constant low grade fever, and an enlarged spleen. The drug worked and we were able to continue our dream of traveling the world. BUT!!!!!!

On October 12, 2010 Joe was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a rare type of Non-Hogkins. He was admitted immediately to the hospital for treatment and we moved temporarily to Houston, Texas for treatment until June 2011. His mortality was smacking us in the face and it was the most dangerous adventure we had been on. Joe was declared in remission in June 2011. We started slowly back on our travels in August to determine if Joe could continue the dreams we had. He was still in remission in September and December. So, we were blessed with a Window of Opportunity (WOO). God had given Joe some borrowed time on earth. We know the Mantle Cell Lymphoma will come back eventually but we do not know when.

On Tuesday we will hop on Delta and fly 20 hours and lose a day to Sydney Australia where we will spend five days at our dear Aussie friend's, Dana, home near the ocean! Joe and I had hosted Dana a few years ago when a great group from the Sydney chapter of the Friendship Force came to visit Atlanta. Oh what a fun filled week we had and we created enduring friendships. We will fly two hours to Hobart, Tasmania to visit a well traveled, funny, vivacious Aussie named Jillian! On March 17, we fly back to Sydney and board the Ocean Princess for a long 20 days with two stops on the Great Barrier Reef, then Darwin in Northern Australia. The other ports are Bali (Indonesia), Ho Chi Ming City (Saigon, Vietnam) then Bangkok (Thailand), a small island off Thailand then disembark in Singapore. We will spend three nights in modern, sparking, shopping haven of Singapore then Delta flies us home.

I will do my best to keep up the blog and post pictures but posting photos takes a bunch of net time so I may not be able to post them till I get back home. My iPhone will be non-operational.

I invite you to Travel with us with this blog as we fulfill a dream that started with a proposal of marriage on March 13, 1992.