Merry Christmas! My best wishes to all of you.
What will you be doing this year for the holiday?
It’ll be a quiet little Christmas here, with us at home here and my parents coming over for a simple, relaxing get-together with a few presents and some special items to eat and most of all, each other’s company. And now it looks as though some snow is being predicted!! Even better. Growing up, Christmastime was joyous and so full of excitement and anticipation and the richness of sensory delights. Low glowing lights and the smells of pine and cookies, the sound of the heater kicking on, the cushy wall-to-wall carpet underfoot, the coziness of our house decorated so beautifully and soulfully, the real tree and prancing out to the street to admire it glowing in our livingroom window; special Christmas cookies in the oven, eating scraps of gingerbread dough as we rolled it out for the cookie cutters, standing on the step stool to make Eskimo Balls with my mom, rolling them in powdered sugar, eating many, and putting the rest into the same tupperware container every year, and then into the fridge where they would be kept until every last one had been snitched. Too bad, that recipe is largely out of circulation these days since it calls for a couple sticks of margarine — oh the glorious 80s — which we would remove from their foil wrappers without a single second thought.
The good ol’ days. These are good ol’ days too, in different ways. At Christmas, I bask in those old memories with relish, while enjoying these good ol’ days right here and now, with Bing Crosby’s White Christmas — the soundtrack of my kid-hood Christmases played on the record player — in the background, and the tree all a-glow.
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Hi L! I hope you had a nice holiday! I was stuck at work myself until midnight on Christmas and New Years 🙁 I found your sickness update by googling blood culture bottles and found your site. I’m dealing with an infection myself, for almost 8 months. They are still trying to figure out what it is. I’m wondering how you are feeling now? Thank you
Hi Kendall! Nice to meet you 🙂
Oh man, about your own mystery infection. It is one of the worst positions to be in, where you feel awful and nobody knows what it is. The brucellosis is gone thank god… although I’ve had a series of other infections since, leading to the discovery of a bit of an immune deficiency. I seem to get stuff that simmers in various places in my body, so it’s not as overt and therefore harder to diagnose — usually it’s the result of an acute infection that never quite clears despite appropriate antibiotics. As of right now though, I have been feeling better overall than I have been in a couple years – but the past year and a half was pretty bad with 2 pneumonias in a year and other things. So things are definitely better but not 100% good. Will they ever be? I don’t know. I have permanent lung damage now (bronchiectasis) which is a real bummer since there’s always lowgrade infection in there and it flares up on a fairly regular basis. Plus I’ve gotten a couple viruses this fall; seems like I would come up and then get knocked right back down again. I go up and down. But the Up has been a LOT higher this summer and fall than it has been in quite a while, thanks to a new doctor and antibiotics for longer term — they make life livable for me so I blister inside when I hear people bash them! I did a month on 3x/week Azithromycin which made me feel Awesome!!!!! Right now I’m on low dose doxycycline (safer antibiotic) which is helping a lot but not as much as the Azith. So overall, big picture, I’m making headway and have been feeling better than in quite a while. (I am able to do things I want to do rather than saving all my minimal energy for survival tasks.) Some days I feel totally great!!! Others, I feel like I’m at square one and I hate those days. 🙁
My sincere best wishes to you; I know what it is like to be in your situation.
Lindsey