Giving thanks

I've been wallowing in self-pity most of the past week, so when Thanksgiving came, I wasn't much in the mood for making the traditional list of gratitude. But in the past twenty minutes, I've realized how grateful I am for three different aspects of the ordeal this summer. True gratitude feels good.

The village came through in 2006, too, as dozens of people helped
us paint our house between Sandy's surgery and the start of chemo.
Here, they were wrangling the foundation plant so they could get
to the house. It took several people to pull that thing back.

When it took a village, the village was there. Whether it was accompanying me in urgent care, joining me in meeting with the doctors, getting our car emissions tested, keeping family and friends informed, keeping me fed (despite my resistance), attending to the removal of the hospital bed so that I didn't have to face it when I returned home, fetching specific food at Sandy's whim, checking on the cats, or helping Sandy know just how loved she was, our family of origin and family of choice — our village — really came through. I don't know how people manage without such a strong and versatile community, and I'm glad I didn't have to find out. Thank you all.

We had good health insurance. We didn't have the cadillac plan we'd had when Sandy was a Microsoft employee, but our plan has low limits on annual out-of-pocket spending and broad coverage of services. Aside from a couple of ambulance rides and a few prescriptions, I didn't have to pay for any of Sandy's medical care in the last five weeks, through two weeks of hospitalization, a full set of brain radiation, several MRIs and CT scans and chest Xrays and lots of blood work, and her final ten days in the hospice facility. The entire time she had cancer — from her first diagnosis of the primary tumor in 2006 until the day she died — we were able to evaluate each treatment option based on efficacy and appropriateness, never having to weigh whether we could afford it. And I was left with no medical debt. I wish that were true for all families affected by cancer. 

I control my own schedule. I'm self-employed, and I'd already decided to take the summer off while we adjusted to a new chemo regimen, so I had no work obligations in June or July. I was able to spend every day and every night in the hospital and at the hospice facility with Sandy. I probably would have, anyway, but I'd have been risking my job to do so. Or I'd have been trying to work from the hospital or hospice, something I was in no position mentally or emotionally to do. I was very attentive to Sandy's wellbeing and to all the medical decisions and issues, but I had no energy left to focus on anything else.

There are literally hundreds of other things I'm grateful for regarding the past year and a half, since Sandy's diagnosis with metastatic cancer. And thousands upon thousands of things I'm grateful for relating to the rest of our life together and my life in general. But these three are important, and they arose spontaneously, and I'm just going to savor the feeling of gratitude for a while.