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One year ago

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I’m not sure what happened to this original post. It seems to have evaporated into cyberspace. So this time last year we were on the way to Las Vegas. I spent my 66th birthday thanking my surgeon for saving my life. It was a hard year with dreadful illness & two major surgeries. I was on ‘industrial strength’ antibiotics intravenously for nine long weeks. I was without a knee cap & unable to bear weight for 12 longer weeks. Then I had the replacement surgery & three more weeks of i.v. antibiotics. I almost died from a bone infection in an artificial knee I’d had for eleven years. No one knows HOW I got the infection. I realized after it was gone that I had been sick far longer than I realized.

I am grateful to be alive to write about it. I’m still battling my two herniated discs in my back &  waiting impatiently to get into a pain clinic for nerve root injections with steroids. I’m being ground down by chronic debilitating pain. Vicodin doesn’t help. TENS unit helps a little sometimes. Ice helps a little sometimes. For those few moments I’m grateful.

I’m approaching my birthday again. I’ll turn 67 on Saturday. But today I am 66! No real celebration is planned. I’ll have some Ben & Jerry’s fudge brownie with whipped cream & pretend it is a ‘Thunder-down-under’ from the Outback.  On the following Wednesday we’re making a day trip to Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Harbor Freight & See’s Candy. I’ll make sure my kindle is fully charged. This will be the first trip out of town we are making in my 1997 Dodge Ram named Bo Peep that the truck fairy left for me a few months ago. It had been black with silver stripes but I had my hubby take off the ‘plastic’ stripes. We had it lowered by removing leaf springs. We also replaced tires. It’s beginning to be personalized. Next step will be to replace the fabric bucket seats with leather. I’ve been so spoiled by leather in all my previous vehicles. I went almost three years without driving & am SO grateful to have that freedom restored. Of course I will NOT drive if I’ve taken pain medication, so my excursions are still limited. But baby steps of independence count.

Here are some aging gracefully images. I love the beautiful rust bucket. I’ll develop some later of Bo Peep. Birthday hugs from Snoopy. I’m older than I’ve ever been before & I’m younger than I’ll ever be again. Getting older isn’t for weaklings. I celebrate each day I wake up.

Happy Friday everyone!