Giving Thanks.

This Monday marks the Canadian Thanksgiving. A traditional family day that revolves around eats and thanks, and a quiet, typically Canadian, introspective on the good things that grace our lives. For me I have a cornucopia of things that give me reason to "count my lucky stars". Barely one year off life support, I am fortunate enough to be going in for a surgery that will make me a bilateral cochlear implant "ci-borg".

My wife, who still carries some rogue chromosomes that hail from the planet leukemia, is fighting a good fight, and will no doubt defeat the enemy in the next couple of months. Her GVH (graft vs. host) that is a byproduct of her stem cell transplant 18 months ago, has been relegated to "occasional" status. We are as "giddy" as school boys and girls.

Guitar boy is pulling off marks in the mid 90's in his first year of high school, and his parents are as proud as peacocks at his scholarly marksmanship. His music marks oddly enough, are not what we imagined. All he does at night is practice guitar, yet somehow it remains his lowest grade on his early progress report. I, of course, blame the teacher. Somehow in high school music, the guitar player has a low status in the band. The pecking order, depending on the conductor, is brass followed by woodwinds, followed by percussion, then the guitar gets some recognition I suspect.

So we will celebrate the turkey day with a fine breast of the bird, ordered to arrive at our butcher on Saturday, to be cooked up with fine fixin's and freshly baked pie on the Sunday. We will celebrate one day early, as I want the Monday the actual holiday day, to rest up for surgery which will be on Tuesday.

Today the time will be given that the drilling will commence, so I will plan my drive-in accordingly. I will pack my little overnight bag and throw in some decent reading to pass the night of surgery, assuming it will pattern my last surgery, where I could not sleep, despite just being out of surgery and still reeling from the effects of anesthesia and pain killers.
The recovery ward is a noisy room with many many patients who are just on an "overnight" recovery rate. The lights, even on low keep me awake.

Luckily I can slip off my one magnet and disappear into the guise of deafness.

For once magnets are off, I still am deaf.

I sincerely hope that if you live in the northern clime that recognizes an earlier harvest than our southern friends, thus the earlier Thanksgiving, that you enjoy a wonderful day filled with thoughts of how much we truly have in life!

Warmest,

David