Thursday, July 10, 2008

Life's plans

Yesterday, I caught up with an old friend that had had surgery, and found out in spite of her extremely serious procedure she is doing well. Her only problem is that she was anxious for her recovery to go faster, and hopes to drive again in September!

She is an amazing person, and often forgets that she has gotten older and that these things, especially these things take a lot longer to happen. After all she is a little bit older than myself, twelve years my senior. But of all people she should know.
This was her 29 th surgery! She has had Rheumatoid Arthritis since her early twenties, and all those surgeries were joint replacements.
This time it was major, major, since her head was falling literally into her shoulders due to her vertebrae giving out having now a combo of Osteoporosis with the Rheumatoid, and being on steroids all these years. They were the only thing available with aspirin, and gold shots when she was diagnosed those many years ago.This particular surgery, which I am not quite sure of or totally understand is that they had to install a pole/bar to her spine from her cervical(neck) region to take the place of eleven of her vertebrae that weren't able to do the job any longer. The dilemma here was that they had to attach it to her skull since nothing else was viable. OUCH!
My friend was also my mentor because she is a volunteer with the Arthritis Foundation for nearly 35 years, which for her part entails setting up programs and self help courses for our entire state. She was my teacher in one of her self help courses about eleven years ago, and that's what got me involved in becoming a volunteer in this particular organization. I did volunteer with other ones since I was twenty. But this was personal, now I was one of them, having been diagnosed with seven types of arthritis, out of the one hundred ones that exist, I was 44 years old.

I did teach Aquacise,and was trained to teach the self help course, became co-president of the local support group, and a board member, and had a few fund raisers to help the cause. Proud to say I was volunteer of the year in 2000.

Sadly, the last few years I have not been so involved; since Hurricane Charley, in 2004 destroyed our home, and then my definite diagnosis with MS, those things threw me, I guess. Thinking about the above friend I should be ashamed that those slight inconveniences should be responsible for my not doing what I did love. I also used the excuse for quitting my writer's group due to the high calorie desserts they serve once a month, and my lack of will power to not eat them.

My husband has also retired in these last two years too, and I do enjoy spending time with him.
At one point I was on seven prescription drugs and a couple caused drowsiness, so I stopped driving out of fear of causing a possible accident. But I do believe my insurance agent was more responsible and caused that concern when she was surprised that I was still driving since I use a cane due to my Ataxia caused by the MS. Ataxia is just a balance issue, not a coordination one. And I never fell over in the car seat! I do drop things, but never ever the car.LOL

And since I have weened myself down to only two medications I do drive occasionally.
Everything is so close here.
Shopping is within a five mile radius, and that includes the mall (movie theaters here),theater(live shows, not movies), cultural center, art galleries, libraries, and groceries.
Our event center is also in that realm of mileage, but is still under construction. All new since the hurricane!

We pretty much have it all here!

Everyone enjoy the day!
And I will too.

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