While I haven’t read all of those earlier entries, I’ve read enough to remember why I started and why I stopped. So many health issues in our core family unit, with myself as the primary caregiver, initially I found a need for an outlet and so I started. It’s tough to share so much that you want to say to even your closest personal friends without them coming away with feelings you’d rather they not have. The beauty of a blog is the ability to connect with persons experiencing similar challenges or maybe just persons who can provide a needed cushion or viewpoint that you won’t - or can’t - get to on your own.
Those early years of RSD (now CRPS) and fructose malabsorption were more than challenging, but this blog and the people who responded helped to sustain me. They gave me a place to share, anonymously in my case, some tough truths without impacting my family or my friends. Again - and I know I said it then, but it bears repeating - thank you for being there for me! Simple acts of kindness that made a very large difference in my life.
Now 11 years later, I will at some point need to change my tagline which says something about caring for the needs of my parent. My mom, who had Alzheimer’s, passed away in January 2016. I’ll write about it at some point, but just not today.
There have been other significant changes in our lives: My youngest daughter, the one with fructose malabsorption, is 24 years old, still living with us as she navigates college. She has her AA and is currently working on her BA. Her grades are outstanding, I’m so proud of her. Late in high school she presented with a seizure disorder, which is now kept at bay with meds, but as a result has put off becoming a driver, which works for me.
My husband over these last eleven years has had multiple medical incidences (MRSA in a leg bone, heart attack, multiple surgeries on both legs, nearly losing one or the other), but having kicked the opioid meds introduced by his CRPS doc, he’s now using marijuana as his pain management tool, a fact about which I am very happy. He and I had made it into our sixties never having done drugs of this type at all (yep, we’re geeks), this choice has brought him back to us as a whole person and allowed him to manage his diabetes better, so much so that he’s now off insulin. Hallelujah!
All of our little dogs over time passed away (yes, there were four, who together totaled about 30 pounds, so like having one midsize dog in four little bodies, haha), and we have added a bigger dog to our family. Not intentionally - she was supposed to be a mini, but I guess that ship has sailed. She’s about 45 pounds, so much more dog (and hair!) in the house than the four little ones. She’s the love of my life currently, though she has some serious behavior challenges - anxiety, leash reactivity, resource guarding - and we’re working through those challenges slowly but surely.
We now have five grandchildren! At the end of my writings before, we were only at one. Amazing! Grandparenthood is the best!
And we’ve so far survived COVID-19. By that I mean as far as we know none of us has had it, but mostly I mean it’s been more than two years since we’ve had a family gathering that included all of us with the grandchildren. My husband’s conditions make him more compromised than most people, so we have been pretty diligent about not exposing ourselves unduly. We have had Zoom calls, Echo Show calls, I’ve stopped and seen them on my own, we worked through how to do remote Easter, Halloween costumes, Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I have really hope that this year (THIS YEAR!) we may have an actual Christmas gathering with the whole family.
This post is just a “catch-up” of what’s gone on for eleven years. Obviously that’s not everything, but the highlights. On to new and better things, I hope to find time to keep the blog fed in the future. And, who knows, maybe some of you who were here with me before are still out there. I’m going now in search of your blogs. I hope I find you! Happy 2022, people! I can’t wait to reconnect!
