One Year

My first surgery was one year ago today. One year, 365 days, 52 weeks, no matter how you slice it is still just one year. I started this journey thinking I was having minor surgery, but alas- not so minor. Yet here I am looking back over the past year, and large chunks of it are a blur but there is good stuff too. I laugh when I think about my stubborn climb to the 87th row of the Coliseum on crutches, my dad pushing me around New York in that hideous wheelchair while I insisted on helping to wheel the thing to feel like I had some control and did something active each day. My many friends traveling from near and far to visit me and support me through rough times. The hours that I spent absorbed in a puzzle of VanGogh’s rendition of Irises, which was sheer insanity. My journey through physical therapy, finally in its ultimate chapter, is definitely a blur of hard work and slow results. The daily trips to that surreal land that was radiation. That darkest time of all- late April and early May, during which time I was saved from complete insanity by my dear friend V-L coming to stay with me. Diving in Hawaii, or really any moment from that trip which is all so happily clear in my mind. Becoming a doctor again and discovering that I still do like my job. These are just a few of the images in my head from the last year, there are so many more things I want to forget and things I never well, but still it is all history now.

I think that I am grateful for not having known what I was in for when I started because I would have been more afraid. As it is, I have taken everything as it came and tried my best to deal and move on. I sometimes reread what I wrote here and I am surprised to discover how much I don’t remember and yet how much I do. I can still laugh and cry with myself. I am glad that I have kept this record of what I have been through. Even if few read it, it is good for me to have put my thoughts down. There are many things I don’t write about, but mostly my thoughts on my journey are here- some good, some not so good, some highly random. Thanks for reading, thanks for traveling this road with me and especially thanks for all your support. It has been one heck of a year.