I have just had a doozy of a start to the New Year. My eyes, thankfully, are stable, quiet and
uneventful. I say uneventful loosely because I still go in for quarterly
injections regardless of what my scans show or what the doctor sees. It seems, for me, that quarterly injections
are keeping rogue blood vessels at bay and for the most part, aside from the
annoying one day recuperation, my vision is stable. Good, because the rest of life is flying off
the rails and I am trying desperately to hang on. My mom was diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s in spring and our Christmas comprised of finding an assisted living
community for her to live in with graduated care for the years to come in the progression
of this disease. I am happy to report we found a place, moved her in and she is
doing fabulous. Then around Thanksgiving
my lower back issues decided to show up with screaming nerve pain down both
legs and fire in my feet. On January 15th,
I have a 2 level Co-flex done to deal with that. Again, thankfully, I am happy
to report that the nerve pain is gone and other than some basic muscle aches
and stiffness I am doing phenomenal.
However, even in spite of living in the solution, one needs time to just
decompress from the stress.
I have spent so much of my recent life pushing through
obstacles in spite of vision loss that any time “life” throws a wrench my way I
feel like I have enough wrenches already, can you relate? When you have any kind of medical/life issue
that consumes a large amount of your mental and emotional energy it is really
easy to feel like you got the short straw in this thing we call life. However, at the same time I have the ability
to navigate these waters better each time a new wrench is thrown my way.
Thankfully I am surrounded by an amazing network of folks who support and
encourage me. I don’t’ have time or
energy for the negative problem basking folks.
I tread with those who, on a very regular basis, pick up the tools to
live and work toward the solutions in life and live a relatively peacefully and
content existence. That is what I want
and that is who I hang out with, because several years ago someone simply said
“hang out with the winners”. Whoever has the life you want, spend time with
them and learn how they do it. The life I want is one filled with peace,
contentment, wise counsel, love, grace, hope and a tool box filled with
solutions to navigate life’s hard obstacles. If there is one thing I have
learned with my 24 years of vision issues, is that most of time we aren't delivered from our hard circumstances we are simply given the people, tools,
and grace to travel through them, if we have the humility, patience and perseverance
to receive them.
