So many dear ones gone

I spent yesterday evening starting the final prep for Thanksgiving dinner. There will be ten of us at my house this year. I'm looking forward to it.

I have a couple of bittersweet Thanksgiving traditions. One is to buy a new container of poultry seasoning every year and mark the date on it. Once the holiday is over it goes into the Thanksgiving decorations box to be taken out and displayed the following year. I've been doing this ever since I started hosting Thanksgiving in 1996 when my mother died. We had found several containers of poultry seasoning in her kitchen cabinets and that somehow started this trend. It has been a long time now. This will be the fourteenth Thanksgiving with another seasoning container to mark the passing of a year.

We always make up a batch whiskey sours before dinner. We add a cherry to the glass for those who have died and often add extras for those we have lost in the year that is closing. This year there will be one for our Aunt Dolores, for cousin Joan and for Aunt Mary. I'll add one, too, for my friend Mary Jo's brother Jack. A small remembrance, it seems, but important to me at Thanksgiving. It reminds me to cherish the people I have with me and to be grateful for the time I had with those who have gone.

Tendon progress

Well, I had my third foot doctor appointment today to talk about the torn Achilles tendon. He had the results from my second MRI. It turns out that my original tear was about 5.5 mm horizontally. That doesn't sound like much to me but it's just under a quarter of an inch and evidently counts as a reasonably large injury.

After two months with that boot on my leg the tear has healed its way down to 4 mm. That's about a 20% improvement. The doctor said that he thought we should give it another month to heal and check again. Surgery would mean that I couldn't put any weight on it for 6 weeks. Waiting another month in the hope that it might keep healing seems like a good option go me. I'll need another MRI in four weeks and will see him again in mid-Deecember. If it continues to heal then I'll keep wearing the boot even after that. If not, it'll be surgery for me. Something fun for the holidays.

Speaking of holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up. For Hallowe'en I wore the boot and carried a jug with three X's on it. I was bootlegger. It looks like I might need to come up with similar holiday related boot decorations for the next few months, too.

I am trying to be positive about this.

Two years today

It was two years ago today that I went in for surgery on the tumor in my lung. What a lot is different since then. And what a lot is the same. I haven't improved myself nearly as much as I had vowed to do. Personal change is harder than I realized.

This week I have been trying to help a dear friend who lost her brother to a sudden illness. It's difficult to do much of real substance but I tried to offer help where I could. The way her family rallied round him reminded me of the way my family and friends were with me when I was sick. I will be working to spend the day with a feeling of gratitude for all that has been given to me. I have been doing that more consistently lately but not as much as I would like. Landmarks such as this week has brought remind me how important it is to maintain that awareness. It lets me make the best of the time I have here.