What are you grateful for this year?

[gimmethesimplelife]

I am wondering what other posters here are grateful for in 2017, this New Year. I find myself personally grateful right now as I have not been here lately much since the first of November as I was quite ill with a liver abscess that i thought mistakenly was an ulcer. I was very sick and unable to keep any food down or even scare up an appetite and have lost 38 pounds and am now down to a healthy weight of 165. I had a procedure drain with a tube somehow up to my liver to drain the abscess and then several weeks of antibiotics and now I am feeling much better and have resumed life again. Lost the PT hotel job but the temp service has lots of banquet work for me coming up in a few more weeks - I will literally for a few months have all the work I want at a new higher wage as I was making $10 an hour doing banquets and that's since been bumped up to twelve dollars and hour due to minimum wage in Arizona going up to ten dollars and hour on January 1st.

So what am I grateful for? My health definitely. It is dawning on me that all else springs from decent health. Antibiotics - I'd be dead 100 years ago from this as antibiotics did not exist then. My SO and my in laws and my mother and my medical bills being picked up by social assistance once more as I could not work and requalified. I am grateful to have had this time to truly slow down and to think at length about life and where I go from here. I am grateful for sunsets and for my yard and for moving back into the house I own half of with my husband, and for my cousin who owns the other half being OK with this. Really, for once in my life I am seeing I have a lot to be thankful for.

And I don't mean to get religious on you'all, I just would like to post that I have recently reacquainted myself with my faith - I'm Catholic - through meeting a gay man on the light rail recently who was wearing a T Shirt that had Gay Catholic printed on it. I just had to ask what that was about and I sensed this person somehow would be OK with my asking. From doing that I hooked up with Dignity Arizona - Catholic masses for Gay and Lesbian Catholics. This is a real shocker to me as I believed I was done with the church - never say never.

So there's a bit of an update for all that know me from my posts here. 2016 was a rough year for many people, to some degree myself included. I am hoping for a smoother year this year and I wish all here a Happy New Year. Rob

[iris lilies]

Mexico didnt play into this serious health issue for you, again? Why not?

Didn't you have an ACA policy prior to this health incident? Did you pay any of the deductible before you moved over to "social assistance?"

Good health is a great thing, agreed.I am glad that you mentioned being grateful for America helping you get there, it would have been churlish not to, given your many past posts.

[gimmethesimplelife]

Mexico didnt play into this serious health issue for you, again? Why not?

Didn't you have an ACA policy prior to this health incident? Did you pay any of the deductible before you moved over to "social assistance?"

Good health is a great thing, agreed.I am glad that you mentioned being grateful for America helping you get there, it would have been churlish not to, given your many past posts.

IL, I am embarrassed to admit this but I put off going to the doctor as long as I could - my logic was that I was going to get checked into the hospital if I went to see the doctor. I realize this is ridiculous but that's what I did, for better or worse. It got to the point where I could not work and lost the hotel part time job but I'm good with the banquet service as you can work as much or as little as you like when they have work for you. I didn't go to Mexico because I honestly thought this would go away on it's own and the herbs I took didn't help as I thought it was an ulcer but it was something else that was undetected until I finally went to the ER - after this a CAT scan was run on me that detected the abscess and I was checked into the hospital pronto. it turns out that my abscess was 3.5 inches in diameter and that putting off seeing a doctor and working as long as I possibly could was not the wise route in this case.

Nest time (hopefully there will be no next time), I will see the doctor sooner. And given that Trump may alter health care for millions, I see Mexico in my future as far as health care goes. To be quite honest, I spent the time after losing the hotel job and before I saw the doctor in bed. So many people were worried about me as I doubt I was on my deathbed but I was very sick and weak and lethargic and even just moving made me want to throw up. This type of illness - very weak and lethargic coupled with inability to eat - was very new to me and I honestly thought I could (legally) herb it away but it took Western Medicine to get me better. It is not 100% clear to me at the moment - but I will look into it Monday, actually - what I will owe in terms of care. Somewhere in there Medicaid kicked in and somewhere in there I'm going to owe money. I will call the social worker at Maricopa Medical Center and get directed as to who to call - I'm just only recently up and around to this level.

At any rate, I am indeed grateful here. I think to myself if this had been 100 years ago i'd be dead by now as the two antibiotics I've been taking did not exist then. Rob

PS Came back to add that another bit of info is that this hospital has a sliding fee scale too for lower income people such as myself but I don't know if I qualify for that as I think you have to be denied Medicaid first before they will sliding fee scale you. Rob

[Gardenarian]

I'm sorry to hear about your ulcer, but glad to know that you are on the mend.

I've been struggling with health issues as well - it is so easy to take well-being for granted, until it's gone.

I'm grateful for the health I do have, and working hard to improve what I can.

I'm increasingly grateful for all the circumstances that came together so that I need not worry about food or shelter.

Health, food, shelter - all the other good stuff is dwarfed in comparison! Except, maybe, books. Couldn't get by without my library.

[Tammy]

MIHS also has a foundation that covers parts of bills for those who can't pay by any other means. Many of our own employees contribute to it regularly. I can't tell you how many shoes we buy for longer term psychiatric inpatients who have none.

I'm proud of what we do there. In spite of our aging infrastructure everywhere I turn, our staff and care is top notch.

Glad you're better.

[ctg492]

What am I grateful for in 2017? This is my plan, so I never forget each day I am grateful. On my calendar I write a single item that the day brought me that made me happy and thankful, not material or money and these are not monumental things at least so far. It really is interesting to me as this has made me think at the end of the day that no matter what happens there was always something good.

The end of the year will be fun to see what I wrote each day.

[catherine]

I know what you mean about being thankful for health. At my age (will be Medicare-eligible in about 2.5 months) I feel extremely fortunate that a feel great every day (knock on wood). Except for a touch of osteoporosis that I'm addressing I have no medical issues. No prescriptions. No aches or pains.

As for that other standard on gratitude lists, I am always extremely thankful for my family--for all of us being close (not geographically, but emotionally).

I am thankful for a contracting job that enables me to address my financial obligations. I remember a couple of decades ago, I could never pay all the bills in one month. Standard practice was coming in the house and checking the lights to make sure the electric company hadn't shut me off for non-payment. I remember when my daughter had to have an emergency appendectomy and when I called my husband from the hospital emergency to tell him, I heard the dreaded recording, "I'm sorry. The number you have called is not in service at this time." My phone and been cut off and I had to call a neighbor and ask them to go to my house and tell my husband I was at the hospital.

Those days have been over for a long time, but while others may curse the checks they have to write for rent or mortgage or electricity, I thank God that I have the funds to pay them.

My life is not picture-perfect, however, and like everyone, I have my own challenges. But I'm equally thankful for those challenges and for the opportunity to grow stronger and hopefully wiser by dealing with them.


BTW, Rob, I'm interested in the fact that you are wading back in the waters of Catholicism. I have long resisted affiliating with any religion just because of my resistance to dogma. That's one reason I love Buddhism and their philosophy of "if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him." But I often feel that call back to the religion of my youth, which also was Catholicism. And I was pretty heavy-duty back then. 12 years of Catholic school and aspirations to be a nun and an altar in my room. I almost returned to the faith after my mother died, but the paperwork involved made me lose interest. I had to track down all my old certificates: baptism, confirmation, marriage. I had to remarry in the Church. So apparently I was not THAT committed to going back at that point in my life.

Recently I've felt a calling to do some type of service work a la Dorothy Day Catholic Worker--maybe work with a food distribution organization. Dorothy Day is incredibly inspiring to me--if you don't know of her, Rob, you should read one of her books--The Long Loneliness is one. I think she would be right up your alley.

[sweetana3]

You dont have to be religious or support organized religion in any way at all to do service work for others.

[catherine]

You dont have to be religious or support organized religion in any way at all to do service work for others.

Of course not. I didn't mean to imply that. But for me, that would be one piece of the whole experience of going back to my childhood faith, if I chose to do that. I can certainly do service work any time, and I do. We have a non-profit right near me that supplies meals and food to the surrounding poor that I have volunteered for. I've volunteered for the Bowery Mission. But for me, I think having the support of a "sangha" (a community that shares your spiritual values--another Buddhist term) would be worthwhile.

[JaneV2.0]

I'm thankful for my relatively good health, and that I keep finding ways to improve it. I take no pills, save a few analgesics sporadically, and see no doctors. I'm thankful that I still have most of my faculties, a paid-up roof over my head, an adequate income, and good friends. I'm thankful for my monkey mind that can keep me entertained from the time my eyes open in the morning until they close at night. I'm thankful to live in such a beautiful, progressive part of the country. I'm thankful for computers, wi-fi, art supplies, books, good food, and cats. I realize how lucky I am.