Hopeful

The new drug to quell my acid reflux and vomiting seems to be working, and well it should with a name like Domperidone -- sounds like fine champagne. So I'm feeling much better, more mobile, more energetic. I'm doing more reading, and slowly venturing around with the walker. And I can concentrate on watching stuff on my computer -- the other night I watched the movie Up, an episode of Two and a Half Men, and Barack Obama's State of the Union address.

I'd be dishonest if I didn't admit that increasing my dosage of the anti-depressant drug Celexa has helped me greatly. I barely recall the first two weeks in the hospital; I really wanted to die, in a passive sort of way. I know people are hot and cold on the use of anti-depressants, but in my case they have changed my life for the better, and I feel fortunate to have them in my arsenal. And I decry the societal stigma against such drugs and mental illness generally.

Recently I wrote about hope and hopelessness. My friend Liz has a wonderful friend Donna who read my blog and sent me some writing by Jerome Groopman, Harvard professor of medicine and author of books such as The Anatomy of Hope. He talked about hopelessness springing from the notion that we don't deserve something better, and I could relate to that. When it comes right down to it, the things I never got in life, I thought I didn't deserve.

It was comforting to realize that I deserve to get better for a while. I may not get better, but if I don't, it won't be because I didn't deserve it. Why did it take me until the age of 52 to get that through my skull?

I interviewed a young woman for the back page of the last issue of Look Good Feel Better magazine, a recently married student who has an incurable cancer. When I asked her about the future, she said she had decided it was OK to look to the future as long as one didn't get attached to it. Those words have helped me.

So today I am hopeful, but I don't look very far down the road. My next goal is to get a day pass and make a trip to my house.

Pollyanna moments:

• Cream of tomato soup Robin brought from the George Brown College Chef School store.
• The lovely little bag Lina crocheted for me is perfect to hold my toothbrushing paraphernalia and hang around my neck so I can get into the bathroom in the wheelchair without spilling things all over.