On April 10th, I had routine surgery to remove a growth in my neck.  My last blog, written almost two months ago, told about how hard it was being for me to eat soup with my right hand, given the nerve damage to my left shoulder that prevents me from being able to use my rotator cuff.  Well, now it’s two months later and I’ve learned to eat lots of things with my right hand.  I am doing major PT with a very solid therapist and I’m going for several acupuncture treatments a week.  I’m growing stronger in my left hand and even now can brush my teeth with my left hand–something that gives me genuine pleasure.  But any recovery involving the damaged nerves is many months away, so patience is the order of my days–historically not my strong suit, to which many who know me will attest.  I live in hope and work hard at my many pages of exercises every day.

What I have not figured out how to incorporate back into my routine is regular postings here, so I write this to see if saying that I’m not writing the blogs that bounce around in my head may help me put some of them into words.  I know writing these blogs lets me be a version of myself that I like enormously, so I believe it will contribute to my recovery if I can return on some regular basis.  Meanwhile I am full of gratitude to my team of healers who all want solid recovery for me.  And I am even more grateful to all the friends and family who are praying or sending me good thoughts on a regular basis.  That support is what keeps me lying down on the floor to execute all the exercises from that position.

As the neurologist whom I visited recently said “A bad thing has happened to you; it doesn’t happed to many people and we don’t really know why it occurs when it does.”  He also remarked that “mother nature is helping you because you are getting stronger.”  On that enigmatic and then encouraging note, I sign off with a promise to myself to return here with actual content very soon.