The Grateful Journey Journal

Wow, I slept until almost 7 today. The late start was due to an evening spent out with my wife and nephew. We had a great time and my health is improving. We finally found the correct diagnosis and started the medicine that will help cure me of all my ailments, hopefully! It's a beautiful Sunday morning, a good looking family day. Since I took a break yesterday from the journal I'll double-up on reasons I have to be grateful this morning. Here we go.

1. The nurse I had at the doctor's office on Friday. She once had very similar symptoms to what I have been suffering from, being lightheaded, constricted feeling in the throat, heartburn, bloating and so on and so forth. She had an inkling of what this might be. She ran and grabbed the finger prick test for this ailment which was spot on. What I have is the h pylori virus, which is the bacteria that causes peptic ulcers. The GERD diagnosis was wrong and my new diagnosis wasn't originally found, because the test for it is specific to that bacteria and they didn't run that at the hospital. The h pylori virus is curable with a rash of medicines. Antibiotics and proton pump inhibitors, it's a two week course of medicines that have me taking 8 pills a day. That's 112 pills total, an awful lot. My hope is that once this course is ove,r so will my symptoms and ailments. If not the next step is an endoscopy to make sure their isn't else wrong down there. The doctor was pretty confident that these medicines will cure it and I'll be back to 100% very shorty. For this I'm changing my middle name to "GRATEFUL."
2. My wife, who worked very hard on a new contract for new phone service within her whole company and pulled it off. This deal which netted her company big savings also got us skybox tickets to last nights Bears/Giants game at Soldier Field. It was an awesome time. We brought our nephew who is a freshman this year and an avid football player. We had a great time in the AT&T box. Don't forget you can follow my nephew's trials and tribulations as he enters the world of high school football at Touchdown Dance. That first post will be next Sunday following the first game of the season next Saturday.
3. To our host at the Bears game last night Alex. Who took time away from his family to make sure we had a great time at the game. He and my wife worked on the new phone deal together. He of course works for AT&T.
4. My mom who made the whole trip possible by watching all four of our kids and the dog. Still an amazingly energetic woman. The kids just love being there. Thanks Mom!
5. My beautiful wife who not only got us the tickets, she did all the driving yesterday. It seems that driving kind of drove my worst symptoms. The virus causes a car sickeness like feeling that gives me the lightheadedness.
6. Brookie, our darling Brookie. We were met last night with some interesting news. Our gorgeous little girl is so very special. She truly is the perfect compliment of brains and beauty.

Even if you feel all alone there is always someone watching, at times helping and always caring. Being alone is a feeling you can only create within yourself. Enjoy everything around you and appreciate the time that you did have with your missing loved ones, but remember they are never truly gone.