Have A Holly Jolly

Here we are in the home stretch of the holiday season waiting for the return of jolly St. Nick. Christmas lights are up everywhere in the neighbourhood, all jellybeans and snowflakes, toques and grey socks. The local citizens like to put the lights up in early December and take them down right after the New Year. If it were up to me, I’d say up December 20th, and down February 28th. I think we need the light more after the great consumer buffet is over and the right angle reality of winter sets in. Shoppers are harried as they step over the homeless, drivers are as courteous as kamikazes and the subway riders are tired, weary, and on the nod as they clutch their booty. Merry Christmas everyone!

Insert blessing count here: I have a warm place to sleep. I have food to eat. I have a wife who is also my best friend. No one is dropping bombs on my house. There are shortbread cookies in the office – [but not for long.] I’m cooking turkey on Christmas day and there will be people there who love me. I have an OHIP number and access to Canadian Health Care. My tumour was diagnosed and I have the great fortune to live about seven minutes away from Sunnybrook hospital, a Canadian centre of excellence for acoustic neuroma treatment. The list goes on and on.

I get the feeling I’m not going to be able get my second MRI or see my neurosurgeon Dr. Pirouzmand until the last notes of “Auld Lang Syne” have broken off like icicles on a Linden tree in the dog park. No worries. Dr. Chen did ask me if I would rather have surgery before Christmas... "Uh, no thanks" and besides, the afternoon television will be better later in the season, there’ll be more snow for Luna at the park, and of course we'll have the added attraction of re-learning balance function on the ice. Maybe I should go the extra mile and attach stability balls to my mukluks.

The waiting, as Tom Petty once sang, is the hardest part. I’m not sleeping as well as I could be and find myself craving an afternoon nap. I also need to limit my consumption of patient stories from the Net. Information and experience are going to help see me through but sometimes ya gotta take a breather and watch a dog show or two on the Outdoor Life Network.

Check out the guestbook and post a greeting. You don’t have to register, and you can use any pseudonym you like. You could post as Madonna or Jude Law and no one would ever know.

Happy Holidays and Warm Wishes To You All.

“Prosperity is not without many fears and disasters; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.”
Francis Bacon