Coping

Learning how to cope with major medical problems is not easy and sometimes it can just about overwhelm me.  I do cope and learn to deal with my situation and try real hard to look for the good , there is always a reason for our trials and things to learn from it.  I think of all the wonderful people I would never have met without my medical problems, the compassion and tolerance I have learned and of course the persistence that I have developed.

At one of the mother- daughter get togethers at church when Emily was a teenager, we played a game kind of like the newlywed game from tv where we were asked questions and tried to guess what the other said.  Anyway one of the questions was what has your mother taught you.  All the other girls answered something like mom taught me to bake cookies or some such thing but Emily answered that I taught her persistence.  How much better is it to have taught my daughter a character trait like persistence than baking cookies; which I would have liked to have done more of but was limited by my body.

Anyway I am learning to cope in new ways, healthier ways hence the picture of the shoes as they illustrate my healthier way to cope.  Because of the medication I take causes my tendons to weaken and not heal after injury so now I have a permantly sprained ankle.  It swells to various degrees and makes shoes a challenge.  For the most part lace up tennis shoes fit the bill but sometimes only slippers will fit.  This is not so bad a home but going out is another thing altogether.  Church was a special problem in that I think one should look their best and I always wear a dress as does most everyone else.  I learned to ignore the fact that I had sport shoes on sometimes, but now I think deep down it still bothered me.  I never got the nerve to wear slippers to church.  Tom wanted me to wear a nice dress that I have and had not worn in a long time due to the shoe problem so Tom took me shoe shopping, what a pain, will the shoes fit if my feet swell, which foot would be the most swollen or would both be swollen or neither of them swollen.  Royal pain and frustration one shoe would fit and the other didn’t.  This time however the problem was solved by Tom’s suggestion that we buy two pairs in two sizes.  It worked real well, I wore one shoe of one size and the other of the other size and nobody knew the difference.  It was great, so much better for my ego and my spirits.  Coping better and better  all the time.

I keep on keeping on.

ENJOY

☺☺☺Johnina☺☺☺