2018: here we begin. again.

Good Sunday morning to you!

Long story short: I ended up needing to get IVIG and platelets on Friday. My platelet count was at 5, so it was necessary and helpful. I'm grateful for all those blood donors out there. Both platelets and IVIG are made out of blood products. I learned while at the Infusion Therapy Center that each IVIG infusion is made up of the antibodies of between 5,000 and 50,000 people!?!?! Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. 

With a cute cardinal that my in-laws sent along with Justin. 

Justin, Finn, and I took it pretty easy Friday night with some movie watching (Dunkirk) and adult coloring books. Yesterday I felt pretty tired and had a bad headache (a common side effect of IVIG for me) most of the day but was feeling great by evening. Today I'm feeling really good!

With all the upheaval of the past week (J's car troubles, the death of Justin's friend, and the platelet drama), Justin and I decided to have a restart of 2018 this weekend - complete with watching a Youtube video of the ball drop in New York City. I also got some ridiculous LED-light plastic glasses from ALDI so we could *cheers* to the year ahead.

I've long been drawn to the idea of "restarts" and "do-overs." By 3rd grade I had a habit every now and then of skipping a page of my journal, then writing "Brand New Life" on the next page, and then continuing on with life on the following page.

So, here we go, 2018! Brand New Life!

If you're feeling the need for a reset at any point in the year ahead, I'd recommend this little activity. Give yourself permission to reclaim the year and reclaim your life. We can start over as many times as we damn well please. We write our own stories, folks. We choose how to interpret the reality in which we live...no one else gets to write your story but you.

While I was at the Infusion Therapy Center, I had the chance to dive more deeply into on my first book of 2018, "Becoming Wise" by Krista Tippett. I encountered this passage which highlights an interview Tippett conducted with Ellen Davis.

"Anything in our world now that slows us down is to be valued and maybe as a gift and even a calling from God."

Anything?! Is that really what she meant?

My spirit chewed the words slowly and then swallowed.

A gift and *maybe* even a calling.

"She could be right," I thought. "This could be very, very true."

Maybe sometimes it's even a calling not of our own choosing, but a calling nevertheless.

Davis wasn't specifically talking about chronic illness or time spent at the hospital, but I think her reflections are certainly true in those realms, too.

Maybe it is all a gift.

A strange, irritating, cosmic present. A gift that's all wrapped up with sterile, white bed linens and i.v. tubing....and a unit of neon yellow platelets on top.