Thankful

It's been so very long since my last post.

Again.

So much has happened in that time.

I could tell you how grateful I am that when I had a hysterectomy last December, I managed to pull through, even though I got incredibly sick and weak in the days following surgery and had some very scary moments during my recovery.

I could tell you how incredibly hard it was to lose my grandpa just three days after my birthday in April. How  I, along with my mom, my aunts and uncles, my brother, my cousins, my husband, and other family and friends watched him struggle to breathe through the pneumonia that clogged 80% of his lungs--but how we were grateful he didn't suffer more, and that he was reunited with my grandma, the love of his life, almost two years after her death.

I could tell you that with this being the first Thanksgiving without both of them, and the week of both of their birthdays, I've already cried six times before 9:30 this morning, but that I'm grateful that I get to spend the day with the rest of my family.

I could tell you that as I hear stories or witness kids with life-threatening diseases, I am so beyond grateful that I have three healthy children. Beautiful, smart, funny, warm, caring, wonderful children, who have made us so proud this year by donating dozens of boxes of toys and clothes to the local House of Hope for homeless mothers and children. How they don't realize that we're not much better off than those families, because we always manage to provide the necessities. How they even try to give away their favorite and newest and most treasured things because they think about how it would feel to be those kids who have less than them.

I could tell you about how this has been an especially tough year financially, and how we've truly struggled--but how we have the best family and friends who have been there for us through it all, even when we wondered how we'd keep going.

I could tell you how difficult it was to balance school and work and family, with both my husband and I full-time students these past few years--but how I am so proud of myself to have finished school (this degree anyway, who knows what the future will hold) and of my husband, who will graduate in May and be the best teacher his future students will ever have. The one they'll remember and talk about for years to come; the one who will make a difference in their lives.

I could tell you how I worried about passing my boards and getting licensed and getting a job in my field for two and a half months, because I'd worked so hard, and it seemed like it might all be for naught--but with patience and hard work, it happened.

I could tell you about the fact that some days can be challenging with the commute and the long hours and the patients that just don't want to participate in therapy--but none of that matters when I'm able to educate those patients on the benefits of occupational therapy, how it can help them get stronger, go back to doing the things that are important and valuable to them, regain independence, and have the best quality of life possible--and then be able to actually follow through with that with their treatment. As a student, and now as a practitioner, I have helped rehabilitate dozens of people already, and I look forward to helping hundreds more. It's an amazing feeling. I had a conversation with a patient recovering from a massive heart attack a few days ago, and he told me how accomplished he felt with the progress he'd made so far, and how we (the members of the therapy team) should feel accomplished too. How in his opinion, it was such an important and fulfilling job, because we were helping him and others get better and go home to their families. How he and I just looked at each other with lumps in our throats and tears in our eyes and felt this mutual sense of pride for our symbiotic relationship through our parts in his recovery. How his wife of 67 years comes to see him every day and tells him how proud she is of him and how grateful she is to us. How they remind me so much of my grandparents in some ways, it hurts. How he and all of my other patients have to stay in the rehab facility today, and some of them will have to stay in the nursing home for the rest of the their lives. Some of them have no family left. Some of them are sick and in pain and lonely, but I'm here with my family today and feeling both guilty and incredibly grateful at the same time because of it.

I could tell you all of this, but I'm watching the parade with my children and husband, and watching them play, and getting ready to go spend the afternoon with my extended family, and being damn grateful for just about everything.

Today I will be thankful for the food before us, the friends and family beside us, and the love between us. Happy Thanksgiving.
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