as it turns out…

I ended 2013 with a whimper. Quite literally.

The day after Christmas, I had my gallbladder out, ending a three-month period of trying to figure out the return of symptoms I first had nine years ago. Symptoms that, back then, I thought were the result of a problem with my kidney. Now I wonder if I had something going on with my gall bladder all along, and the kidney issue truly was an incidental finding. A lucky one anyway, as that problem truly had needed to be fixed, and sooner rather than later.

Then, on New year’s Eve, I went to the cupboard to get some champagne flutes, the special crystal ones my sister gave me almost 30 years ago, and on the way back across the room, I slipped on a dog bone and fell right on my behind, smashing all three glasses and cutting my right hand in five places in one fell swoop. (Fortunately, no stitches were necessary).

So perhaps I ended 2013 with a bit of a bang, after all.

Either way, it was a year I let go of gladly. Not that it was all bad, certainly it wasn’t. But I am ready to get on with life, to move forward, to heal and work and get busy again. Ready to stop worrying about my health and fighting a medical system that seems to get worse by the day. I yelled a lot in the last three month. I refused to sit by and wait. I refused to have tests and get sent to specialists that I believed had nothing to do with my symptoms. I fought for antibiotics and consultations. I was angry and bitter and frustrated and disgusted. And mostly, I was tired of being ill.

So I’m ready to let it all go, with the turning of a calendar page.

I’m ready to see what happens next in the book of my life, ready to write a new chapter.

It’s cold today, snowing and blowing in classic January-in-Western-New-York style. But I’m ready to get back to work.

And fortunately for me, I don’t even have to go out into that weather to do it.

I’ve already made the commute from my bedroom to studio (though of course, I’m still in my pajamas). I can drink as much tea as I like once again (though I’ll try not to get too carried away). I can get back to normal (at least my normal, which we all know is slightly off-center).

I’ll still be a klutz. I’ll still be 51 and getting older by the minute. I’ll still be a hermit who spends much of life in pajamas, working away in a tiny studio.

But I’ll be smiling, and that will make all the difference.

2013, I hardly knew ye. Yet you were mine, just the same.

I’ll remember you, always.

 

 

 

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