Re: Any GOALS or DREAMS or REFLECTIONS for the New Year? Here's mine....

[Guest guest]

, you've been through an awful lot in 2005. Good luck with all of your dreams and the future.

We're here for you.

Shirley

P.S. How old is Jerry? If you don't mind me asking.

-- Re: Any GOALS or DREAMS or REFLECTIONS for the New Year? Here's mine....

I do not know if I actually reserve the right to respond to this, especially since I am liable to go on forever. I'm going to try though.

My goal, to provide my daughters with a solid foundation so that they never question whether or not they were and are loved. I want to fill their days with joy, laughter, peace, security, nurturing, and a thirst for knowledge that will transend their lives long

after I have departed this world.

My dream is to have an impact, no matter how small, on someone outside of my family. I do not wish to be known as a famous actress or renown for my cooking skills or to be remembered for finding a cure for a disease. Rather I want to have done something that will touch someone else's life in a positive manner. I think sometimes there are so many negative things one can find that its difficult to see the good. I want to make someone else's life change, to help them to enjoy it more.

My reflections, I look back on 2005 and my mind reels over the changes that have taken place. Last week was my birthday, I turned 29. That same day was a year since I was diagnosed. How much went on in that twelve months, it seems so unreal to me sometimes. Until November 2004, I was a busy working mom with a three year old and a two month old baby. I devoted my days to caring for the infirm at work as a geriatric nurse and caring for my family at home. One month later, I was blind and in pain. January I ran from everything real and lived in a world where nothing could touch me and I was, in my eyes, just wonderful. February and March were spent in and out of the hospital. April was okay. May and June, hospital again. Then summer was here, my husband left me. My MS worsened to a point that I was unable to walk, swallow, or otherwise function. All of that took me thru August and into September, things actually started to look up, the MS calmed down. My strength came back, some of my lost motor skills were regained, there were a few minor setbacks, but all in all, we all thought we had crossed the worst of things. How wrong we were. October and November, Jerry had a heart attack and stroke respectively. We were separated again, this time not of our choosing. Through all of that I managed to injure my knee and had surgery to repair it. Thanksgiving 2005, Jerry came home with us. He is not the same man, love wasn't enough to fix him. He is back in a skilled nursing facility. I'm fighting my own battle with illness right now. Its definitely been a year long battle and as scared as I am right now, as fearful of the future, I can't help but look back at all the good things that could have easily slipped through my mental cracks (there are many LOL) My grandmother surviving a near fatal heart attack in which she was given a one percent chance for survival. She's home, living life fully again. My sister losing custody of her son but working hard to regain it again, and doing it. Achieving a lifelong dream, to open a gift shop, which while not fully recognized, surely had gotten a start. Thats something that a year ago, I never would have imagined. Finally, I can reflect on all of you, especially you Sharon and how all of you have blessed my life, allowing me to be a part of your world, sharing your lives with me, letting me learn about you and from you, giving me opportunities to vent and rejoice amongst friends.

I am looking forward to this new year with alot of dreams and expectations, I do not know what the future holds. I don't even know if I will be here for another New Year. What I do know is what my heart holds. That is alot of love. So much love that I fully expect to live forever on this immense love.

In closing, I just want to say, from the very bottom of my heart, Happy New Year and may you all be blessed this year as much as I have been blessed.

Love to you all

Does anyone have any GOALS or DREAMS or REFLECTIONS for the New Year to share with the group?

I'm going to get sappy, long-winded and very reflective here so please excuse me folks. At the age of 54, I feel the sands in the hourglass slipping away grain by grain...6.... and it causes me to reflect on the things I wish I had done in my life. AND what I want to do still. Life isn't over just because I have MS. At least it shouldn't be, should it?

All my life I have always dreamed of living in a log cabin back in the woods with my family. I've also dreamed of living near the beach. Instead I've lived most of my life in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. Smack dab in the desert with barely any trees or grass. HOT and miserable to say the least. I stayed there because I was the caregiver for my grandmother, father and then my mother. After I was finally on disability and no longer tied to my job, I moved to Northern Arizona. It was wonderful to be free of my job and the resulting stresses and strains of working in Child Protective Services. I felt like MS was the best thing that ever happened to me! In Northern Arizona I lived on a small, struggling farm and raised goats, chickens and ducks. We had llamas and a milk cow too. I loved it and felt like I was thriving there. I learned to milk goats and my hand strength improved dramatically. So did my stamina. Some of you know that I then had a near fatal rollover car wreck in 2002. I know that for a week I hovered between life and death --and life finally won. That life/death experience changed me a lot and made me want to seek out the experiences and changes I felt I needed. I wanted so much more from what's left of my life, you know? It's a long story but I ended up moving to the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. There we have 40 acres 2 miles from the road. We have a huge old drafty log cabin surrounded by tall spruce and birch and alder trees. We get our water from our creek. We are totally off-grid and have an outhouse. So there's my cabin in the woods folks! And we are just 5 miles from the ocean. There's my other dream fulfilled! It's truly utopia..except for not having my family all there with me. Now THAT brings me to tears... I just know that I NEED that cabin in the woods. I am rejuvenated of mind and body there in our Alaska backwoods. I am in Arizona again now. Back in the desert as I was to begin with years ago. My body is aching to be out of here. I'm stiff again and I'm in so much pain. In Alaska the pain was much less for some reason and the stiffness was nearly gone. In Alaska I can even sit Indian-Style on the floor! LOL I hadn't been able to do that since I was a teenager. In Alaska we had to traverse the 2 mile trail from the road to our cabin by either hiking or 4-wheeler. After a few months we got an ARGO (a 6 wheeled tracked vehicle). To get in the ARGO I use a step stool to get up to the right level, carefully maneuver myself over to the edge of the ARGO then I scramble over, crab-like, into the ARGO. It's not pretty but it works. I don't think my body would let me do something like that here in Arizona. So many people warned me that my pain would be terrible in the damp weather in Alaska but it's worse here in in Arizona. Why the difference? I don't know.

So what do I still want to do in life? I want to dig clams on the beach. That's quite the goal, huh? But it's hard for me to walk out on the beach and then do all that bending over. LOL.. I want to catch salmon. I want to catch some big halibut but I'm afraid to go out in a boat on the ocean (working on that one). I want to learn to make really good soap. The kind that starts with lye. I want all my kids and grandkids to live around me. Since that's not going to happen I'm going to have to travel around a lot. That's not my ideal but it's workable. AND I want to learn to make really good soap. The kind that starts with lye, you know?

That's me folks. Now what about you?

Sharon

Sharon (MSersLife creator/owner)

“One minute it's a giant cabbage and the next, ka-boom! You've got cole slaw all over you." V.R. , Palmer, Alaska, where Cabbages grow huge

Yahoo! ShoppingFind Great Deals on Holiday Gifts at Yahoo! Shopping

Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year.