I guess the biggest things that happened were due to my health. My job as an elementary school teacher puts me into contact with over 900 children...many of whom bring their germs to school with them. I ended up with 4 different viruses between Thanksgiving of 2014 and the end of January 2015. My body just crashed. They pumped me full of antibiotics and that brought out my colitis. I lost over 20 pounds and by March 1st, I weighed 170 pounds! I haven't been that skinny since high school.
Slowly but surely, my body began to function more normally and I started gaining weight and working out again. I'm still not able to run 13.1 miles...but I'm working on it.
Then, I had another health issue pop up. In June of 2014, I went for my annual physical. My PSA levels were at 2.0 That is still okay but higher than my doctor would like them to be for a man of my age. So, he had me start taking saw palmetto. Fast forward a year and they were at 2.4. So, he wanted me to see a urologist. We talked and he did a quick physical exam. We talked some more and he discussed the idea of a biopsy of my prostate. I agreed and went through with that process. It was not fun. I had to wait about a week for the results and they weren't exactly good news. I have prostate cancer. We're going to monitor it for the next year and see how quickly it grows. I have to go through another biopsy next month...oh fun!!!
A couple of weeks ago, I learned about a new project going around the web...mostly instagram. Its called the 365 Grateful. Basically, you need to think of things each day that you're grateful are a part of your life. I can see that some days are going to be easier than others. I decided to start on New Year's Day.
January 1, 2016--The first thing that I was grateful for was something very unexpected. Our dachshund Rosie had some fatty tumors removed from her left side. She's 14 years old and fatty tumors like this are common with many dogs. One of them was just a little bigger than we...the 2 of us and our vet...liked so they removed them when she went in for a routine dental cleaning. She did fine for the first couple of days. New Year's Day, we discovered that she had wiggled out of her sweater. The sweater was meant to keep her from liking at the stitches. This meant that we had to make a trip here.
It wasn't the first thing that I expected to be grateful for...but believe me when I say that we were very grateful that they were open on a holiday. They ended up removing all her stitches and putting in staples. She even ended up with this....
A Cone of Shame!
They also gave her a more form fitting t-shirt that works better than her sweater. We took the cone of shame off later that day and she's done very well with the sweater.
January 2, 2016--Today, I was grateful for the gym. This place and these people have helped me out so much in improving my physical fitness. I'm not an athletically inclined person to begin with and am much better than before because of this place.
January 3, 2016--Today, I'm grateful for my husband. This is a picture I took while we were driving home from the grocery store this morning. It was just nice to hold his hand while I was driving.
We've been together for almost 19 years and he means more to me than I can express in words. Here's a picture we took on Christmas Day.
We have such a good time together. He is the most important person to me in the world.
