Friends

I have been home from the hospital for almost a month now.  I am still on oxygen but only when I am showering, exercising or going out.  Last Thursday I actually went and met my "cousin" for coffee and picked up a few groceries.

I exercise daily with hand weights doing chest expansion exercises to strengthen my lungs.  I use a spirometer (google it, as my husband would say) while I am watching TV.  We await the delivery of the recumbent bicycle I bought last week.  It is good for my husband's hip as well as cardio for me.  I quite possibly can exercise my way off of the oxygen.  However, I have no control over the underlying fungal infection on my lungs and it's progress.  When I picked up a re-fill of the medication for it last week ($1200.00, by the way), I asked the pharmacist how long patients usually remain on this drug.  He told me it was three to six months.  All I can do is exercise and take my medication, the rest will remain to be seen.

Last Saturday night we had a friend over that we hadn't seen in well over 15 years.  I am dedicating this blog to her because she pointed out the following:

Since I have been sharing my life with the world via this blog it has caused a lot of people that I have not seen or heard from in years.  I spent an hour on the phone last Sunday with a friend from Edmonton who I haven't spoken to in 30 years.  Another woman who I went to university with and was a close friend at the time called me.  It's not like we had an argument and our friendship dissolved.  Life just happened.  I get messages on Facebook from people from my past and my present after I publish a blog entry.  A few friends from summer camp, girls who I shared a cabin with from the age of 8 - 18 for two months every year, have contacted me.

Needless to say, all of this makes me very happy.  There's no friends like old friends, especially for someone who is living in a city other than the one they were raised in.  I don't think that people who have been born and lived their whole lives in one place can truly appreciate the magnitude of that.  Or maybe it's just me and my circumstances.