We are currently visiting in Virginia...

Had to come to Virginia for our doctor appts on Tuesday. On Monday night I laid in bed and started to think more about whether it wise to have the surgery at this time. After watching an episode of Oprah, on Monday, I downloaded the latest version of Suze Orman's book and read it Monday evening. The whole week of episodes has been about "A New Life"...in terms of nutrition, sexual well being, financially, health, etc. Didn't take long to read Suze's book since many of the chapters did not pertain to us...we no longer own a house nor do we intend to buy one...we don't have any credit card debt.....we have good credit scores.....we don't have any student loans (although I did glance over this info since several of our kids have school loans and both of us have taken out private loans for our kids). So it was a quick read. The one thing that Suze said is that a person absolutely must have health insurance. This was our biggest dilemma when we started putting together our life on the road. Even for high deductible policies, the monthly rates are ridiculously high.
The other part of consideration, on whether to have the surgery or not is the cost of surgery, since I would be self-pay. After the rocky road that investments and the stock market have taken over the last year, our investments are down drastically from where they used to be. To take a chunk of that money to pay for surgery, at this time, is not something that I'd really care to do. I would rather use some of that money, if need be, and buy us health insurance policies. So, when I went to the doctor I told her that I wanted to revisit the non-surgical options. We did and we'll see how things go for the foreseeable future without surgery.
Since I'm not going to have surgery, we are free to leave the area after I finish my training on the 25th. We are deciding where in Florida we will go for a month or two. There are several things we want to check out....friends to visit in the area and on the way to Florida. We want to look for places to stay in between deployments to disasters....we have to go somewhere once the inspections are done for an area. We also want to check out animal rescue places that I am interested in. This would be a great combination, with the disaster work, and the best possible combination in regards to "work" that we could do.
Oh, and in regards to health insurance. I do think that at some point, Obama's administration will find a way to offer affordable health care to all Americans. Until that happens, Linda and I need to get it, to avoid any costly monumental illnesses that could wipe out our retirement savings. That is our project now....to find a policy that we are happy with and meets our needs.