Thank you!

Many thanks to one and all for the nice Birthday wishes. It was an intriguing day, to say the least. I spent most of the afternoon into the evening at the local emergency room with my son. What we feared was appendicitis turned out to be a distressful reaction to the medication he had recently ceased (Thank God!) and he was fine at evening' end. Mrs. D is home once again after spraining the recently-repaired knee caused by falling. Good insurance and/or SLI should cover expenses, but she's really discouraged.

I've been falling a bit less, but the dizziness is frequent and beyond just annoying. I've struggled recently with panic attacks brought on by new but vague flashbacks. My new therapist is confident that we'll get a handle on this soon. Fibro sucks big time, as many of you who deal with it will concur. I've been crying a lot when no one is looking; after nearly a year and a half of constant weeping, my family needs a break. But you folks have the biggest, most welcoming shoulders a girl could ever cry on.

This time two years ago marks my foray into the world of fiction writing, which my therapist says has actually been helpful in recreating neural pathways for my memories to travel through and be dealt with in a way that I can now handle. The upside to this as well has been all of the love you folks have shared with me. I'm glad I got sick, in a way, because I might never have re-discovered this part of me.

So I still cry, but the tears are healing and cleansing, even if they start out painful they end in joy. Thank you all for making my birthday one of the best I've ever had in my 3/5 of a century. Much love and gratitude, Andrea

Hope she doesn't mind, but special thanks to the girl who is the Veronica Lodge to my Betty Cooper,
Ronni Pupkitrova, for getting the Birthday ball rolling. You are such a girl!