| Welcome to our twenty-third monthly newsletter. We have kept our promise of only one newsletter a month. This month is a special edition. We usually discuss our recent travel discoveries and future travel plans, but this month, we are highlighting my recent trip, “12 Days at the Mayo Clinic.” 12 Days at the Mayo Clinic Here in Florida, the Fall is finally setting in. But rather than enjoying the nice cooler weather, I spent the first twelve days of the month at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. I entered the hospital on Halloween as I was having a bleeding problem in my bowels. I had a similar situation a year ago, but that one quickly stopped, and the doctors decided it was the result of an Ulcer in my stomach. Unfortunately, they were wrong. It was an early warning about a much bigger problem in my small intestine. After checking into the hospital on Halloween, it quickly became ghostly as getting the bleeding to stop was not easy. Before it stopped, I had taken 11 transfusions to keep my hemoglobin levels at a reasonable level. After the bleeding stopped, they found that I had a 4cm mass in my small intestine. The mass proved to be cancerous and was surgically removed on day 7 of the 12-day “vacation.” The following five days were spent recovering from the surgery, which left a foot-long vertical scar on my belly. I was released from the hospital on day 12 with some good news. Here is the good news—and why I say, “We have so much to be thankful for.” It appears that the surgery was entirely successful, and as best we can tell, I am now cancer-free. I am not doing a victory lap yet, as I still have several tests to do to 100% verify this excellent news, but all the signs are looking good. The biopsies that were performed on the nearby lymph nodes were all negative and there are no signs of any metastasis. I was pleased with all the attention I received in the hospital, not only from the family (pictured above, who traveled from all over the country) but also from so many local friends. In particular, my stepdaughter Blair and her two four-year-olds, Jack and Carter, were a nice surprise. They both offered to make me tomato soup when I recovered. We will see them for Thanksgiving, and my other grandkids (Katherine, Andrew, and Caldwell) will be here for Christmas. I am truly blessed. Okay, back to travel and the website. Passports In September, I told you we would be updating our passport post to explain the new process for renewing your passport online. I received some positive feedback from one of our readers about how the process worked and how they got their new passports quickly. Unfortunately, I am still researching the process and have not yet updated the post. Hopefully, we will get it out in the next week or so. Significant Changes in the Future Finally, I want to update you about a significant change we are planning for our website, CosGuide4travel.com. We have been getting several messages from professional marketing firms that, while they believe we have some great content on our website, we need some changes to make it more searchable on Google and other search engines. We appreciate you, our loyal followers. However, if we want to achieve our mission of helping educate more people about the wonderful world of travel, we realize we need to expand our reach to more interested travelers. Therefore, with the assistance of a professional web-oriented marketing firm, we will be restructuring the website. The work, which was slightly delayed by my side trip to Mayo, will take a few months. We expect to have the new website ready shortly after the first of the year. In the meantime, we’ll keep and update the current website and let you know about our travels. The monthly newsletter will also continue to be published. If you enjoy the website and the newsletter, let us know. We greatly appreciate your feedback. Future Travel
Unfortunately, due to my surgery, we decided to cancel our annual November trip to Cabo San Lucas, but we are still planning on some major travel in 2025. The airlines have gotten a lot better at allowing you to cancel or change reservations as long as you are willing to accept future travel credits, so we have developed a reserve, Our 2025 travel plans include a 48-day cruise starting in February in Mumbai, India, and ending in Tokyo, Japan. We will fly to Mumbai on Etihad Airlines with a stopover in Abu Dhabi. We are heading home from Tokyo via stops in Sapien, Guam, and Kauai, Hawaii. We will also visit NYC twice, one in July and the second for the US Open in late August. In July, we will join friends for a cruise through the Baltics and Norway. Finally, in October, we will be making our third trip on the Danube River, but starting in Budapest, we will head east to see Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Here’s praying our health holds up so we can enjoy all this wonderful travel next year. Black-Friday Travel Specials Many cruise lines and travel shops, including Amazon, offer black Friday Specials. If you click and head to the Travel Resources Post on the website, you can follow any of the links on that page to either Amazon or other travel-oriented sites that are offering some great black Friday sales. We receive a small commission if you follow the links, but you will be able to shop and get great offers at no additional cost. Happy Thanksgiving. Paul Cosgrave
Cos@cosguide4travel.com
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