Hi everyone!
For anyone who doesn't know who I am... I am the wife of Crown Cues. I am usually the "voice" of Crown Cues, also. :wink:
We have missed all of you over the past year. A lot has been happening with us that was way beyond our control and we are finally free to fill you in on it.
Late last year, we decided Gene would not work on new cues during 2011, so he could devote the year to catching up on all the orders he had waiting. That WAS our intention. However, life had a different and much scarier turn for us.
Some of you will remember that a couple of years ago, one of our sons was loosely diagnosed with cancer, possibly Hodgkins Lymphoma. But, nothing was really done about it, except to keep a watch over him and wait to see if anything changed. Well, change kept coming, but nothing kept being done about it.
This spring, our son finally got an official diagnosis - He had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He called me and gave me the specific diagnosis over the phone, which I immediately looked up on the computer. From the diagnosis and the severity of his symptoms, I was able to determine he was in STAGE FOUR. As scary as this was, we quickly determined that we could not tell him this news and would leave it up to his doctor to tell or not. However, we knew this meant we would have to be available at any moment to watch his kids, while he went through the chemo treatments, rushed to the hospital, etc..
For much of the year, our son spent more time in the hospital than out of it. He was on a first name basis with the emergency room personnel and found a good friend in one of the doctors he met, there. He even found a new church home, thanks to all his visits to the hospital.
Shortly after he began his treatments, our son confronted me with the lack of info on what stage his cancer had developed to. I simply told him that the docs would let him know, if they felt it was important. But, since they didn't tell him and they said it was treatable, he should just do what they said and we'd do our best to be there to watch the kids, or transport him back and forth to the hospital, etc., when he needed us. During all this time, we chose to be quiet about what stage our son was, in case the doctor had continued not telling him. WE DIDN'T DARE tell anyone else, for fear that word would get back to him and give him doubt, which might shake any chance of his survival. We couldn't write it in an e-mail, or speak it over the phone. We just had to sit on the news and help him through it.
However, while we went through this, many of you thought we were abandoning ship. We have often been unable to respond to calls, e-mails, etc.. When the problem wasn't a lack of time, it was the fear we might accidentally tell the purpose for our absence, then it might be shared and our son find the news on a thread in a forum, or being discussed on a stream. We simply could NOT afford to give him any reason to doubt his chances of recovery.
During all this time, we had two major computer crashes that were devastating to us. One hard drive literally BROKE beyond retrieval. Well, they said they could TRY to retrieve the info for $1000, possibly more, but the drive actually broke inside, so it was possible we could pay the money and get nothing. A few months earlier, the recordable cd/dvd drive broke and we had not had time to fix it. We had an external drive, once. But, we quit that, after it almost burn the house down. Since the son was so ill and we spent so much time helping them out, time to get it fixed was just not happening. So, there was no back-up for about a year's worth of files. That's why I said it was devastating to us. It really was.
Updating the Crown Cues website has just not happened, this year. There has been little spare time. When I did have time, I didn't have brains.
During all this, I've had to continue working toward my recovery from my heart attacks and cancer. It seems like it has taken forever, but I'm a real human, again. FINALLY. However, I still exhaust much more quickly than before and when I'm down, I'm down hard for a few days, not just overnight.
Back to our son - A couple of weeks ago, he received the news about his most recent tests... He was completely free of any detectable cancer!! They said he will still have about 6 months of recovery care and they will have to keep a close eye on him, because this round was quite aggressive and they can't take a chance of it returning. they also FINALLY told him he had been stage 4. So, while he recovers from all the chemo and we all try to find some semblance to our prior lives, it is much like a cool down period, so we can ALL recover from the intrusion in our lives, caused by the cancer.
Basically, we THOUGHT we took 2011 off to work on cues, but God gave us the time to help our son stay alive. We are glad we were able to help them out, but we now have to return to our lives and try to rebuild from where we left off.
If you will all bear with us for just another month or two, while we try to catch up on the things in our life that have to be caught up, we'll try to resume the cue business and get back to our AZBilliards family, once again. We have missed you all. To all of you who kept us in prayer during our absence, we thank you! It was evident that God was very present in all our lives. We still have our son and we are SO THANKFUL for that!
Sometime within the next month, or so, we will ask for correspondence from those who have cues on order, so we can all get back on track, together. We hope you will forgive us for seeming a bit distant, but it was for the sake of our son and his life. There is nothing more important than that. We simply could not share the whole story, until now, so it seemed much more shallow than it truly was.
On another good note, I was able to begin designing products, which are finally starting to sell pretty regularly. We are hoping this will be a good income to help us afford the mess of all my medical bills from the past 6 years and the extra expense of having the grandkids so much, this past year. If you are interested in checking out some of the products I've designed, the link is in my signature.
Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts, for being so patient with us through this year.
Oh... To those who are used to getting Christmas cards from us every year, we will NOT be sending them out, this year. It isn't because we don't love you, but we are still in the process of rebuilding our files lost from the computer crashes and dealing with major time issues, too. Please help us spread the word.
For anyone who doesn't know who I am... I am the wife of Crown Cues. I am usually the "voice" of Crown Cues, also. :wink:
We have missed all of you over the past year. A lot has been happening with us that was way beyond our control and we are finally free to fill you in on it.
Late last year, we decided Gene would not work on new cues during 2011, so he could devote the year to catching up on all the orders he had waiting. That WAS our intention. However, life had a different and much scarier turn for us.
Some of you will remember that a couple of years ago, one of our sons was loosely diagnosed with cancer, possibly Hodgkins Lymphoma. But, nothing was really done about it, except to keep a watch over him and wait to see if anything changed. Well, change kept coming, but nothing kept being done about it.
This spring, our son finally got an official diagnosis - He had Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. He called me and gave me the specific diagnosis over the phone, which I immediately looked up on the computer. From the diagnosis and the severity of his symptoms, I was able to determine he was in STAGE FOUR. As scary as this was, we quickly determined that we could not tell him this news and would leave it up to his doctor to tell or not. However, we knew this meant we would have to be available at any moment to watch his kids, while he went through the chemo treatments, rushed to the hospital, etc..
For much of the year, our son spent more time in the hospital than out of it. He was on a first name basis with the emergency room personnel and found a good friend in one of the doctors he met, there. He even found a new church home, thanks to all his visits to the hospital.
Shortly after he began his treatments, our son confronted me with the lack of info on what stage his cancer had developed to. I simply told him that the docs would let him know, if they felt it was important. But, since they didn't tell him and they said it was treatable, he should just do what they said and we'd do our best to be there to watch the kids, or transport him back and forth to the hospital, etc., when he needed us. During all this time, we chose to be quiet about what stage our son was, in case the doctor had continued not telling him. WE DIDN'T DARE tell anyone else, for fear that word would get back to him and give him doubt, which might shake any chance of his survival. We couldn't write it in an e-mail, or speak it over the phone. We just had to sit on the news and help him through it.
However, while we went through this, many of you thought we were abandoning ship. We have often been unable to respond to calls, e-mails, etc.. When the problem wasn't a lack of time, it was the fear we might accidentally tell the purpose for our absence, then it might be shared and our son find the news on a thread in a forum, or being discussed on a stream. We simply could NOT afford to give him any reason to doubt his chances of recovery.
During all this time, we had two major computer crashes that were devastating to us. One hard drive literally BROKE beyond retrieval. Well, they said they could TRY to retrieve the info for $1000, possibly more, but the drive actually broke inside, so it was possible we could pay the money and get nothing. A few months earlier, the recordable cd/dvd drive broke and we had not had time to fix it. We had an external drive, once. But, we quit that, after it almost burn the house down. Since the son was so ill and we spent so much time helping them out, time to get it fixed was just not happening. So, there was no back-up for about a year's worth of files. That's why I said it was devastating to us. It really was.
Updating the Crown Cues website has just not happened, this year. There has been little spare time. When I did have time, I didn't have brains.
During all this, I've had to continue working toward my recovery from my heart attacks and cancer. It seems like it has taken forever, but I'm a real human, again. FINALLY. However, I still exhaust much more quickly than before and when I'm down, I'm down hard for a few days, not just overnight.
Back to our son - A couple of weeks ago, he received the news about his most recent tests... He was completely free of any detectable cancer!! They said he will still have about 6 months of recovery care and they will have to keep a close eye on him, because this round was quite aggressive and they can't take a chance of it returning. they also FINALLY told him he had been stage 4. So, while he recovers from all the chemo and we all try to find some semblance to our prior lives, it is much like a cool down period, so we can ALL recover from the intrusion in our lives, caused by the cancer.
Basically, we THOUGHT we took 2011 off to work on cues, but God gave us the time to help our son stay alive. We are glad we were able to help them out, but we now have to return to our lives and try to rebuild from where we left off.
If you will all bear with us for just another month or two, while we try to catch up on the things in our life that have to be caught up, we'll try to resume the cue business and get back to our AZBilliards family, once again. We have missed you all. To all of you who kept us in prayer during our absence, we thank you! It was evident that God was very present in all our lives. We still have our son and we are SO THANKFUL for that!
Sometime within the next month, or so, we will ask for correspondence from those who have cues on order, so we can all get back on track, together. We hope you will forgive us for seeming a bit distant, but it was for the sake of our son and his life. There is nothing more important than that. We simply could not share the whole story, until now, so it seemed much more shallow than it truly was.
On another good note, I was able to begin designing products, which are finally starting to sell pretty regularly. We are hoping this will be a good income to help us afford the mess of all my medical bills from the past 6 years and the extra expense of having the grandkids so much, this past year. If you are interested in checking out some of the products I've designed, the link is in my signature.
Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts, for being so patient with us through this year.
Oh... To those who are used to getting Christmas cards from us every year, we will NOT be sending them out, this year. It isn't because we don't love you, but we are still in the process of rebuilding our files lost from the computer crashes and dealing with major time issues, too. Please help us spread the word.