Reflections of gratitude

When things turn out to be less bad than you'd feared, you should stop and remember to be grateful.

1. When the last two fingers on my left hand hurt, for months, I was sure it was the start of rheumatoid arthritis. It runs in the family, it follows the same gene as Crohn's Disease which I already had in my 20's, I've thought for a long time that I'm bound to develop it sooner or later, and this made me think it was sooner. But I went to the doctor, got a pile of blood tests, and although I had a very slight elevation in my ANA factor (whatever that is), it turned out that a few days of lots of Advil fixed the fingers up, and although sometimes they're still a bit stiff in the morning when I get up, it's not the beginning of a lifetime of chronic pain and debilitation.

2. When I noticed that I had to hold vitamin bottles and soup cans a little further away to read the ingredients list, I thought, it's time, here it is. I'm over 40 and my close vision is going. I thought I would have to get glasses and wear them all the time, I thought I might even need bi-focals because I had trouble with distance vision in the past. Well, it turns out my distance vision actually got better - the eye doctor thought it was from lack of use and too much close work rather than a change in lens shape. So I don't need extra glasses for driving at night. Just some reading specs, and since the correction was symmetrical I could just get some off-the-rack glasses at the drug store (actually they were from a glasses chain at the mall, but same difference), and I don't even need them that frequently, only for meetings in which we have to read tiny numbers on spreadsheets.

3. I was having belly problems, on and off, and they were getting worse and worse until they got really severe. I couldn't eat anything without getting an upset stomach, and I spent one whole Saturday in pain a few weeks ago, so I knew it wasn't just work-stress-butterflies. Just about then I had a grocery crisis, though, and switched from cereal with soy milk to toast for breakfast, and the problem went right away. Who knew that soy caused digestive upsets? And I was having lots of it - after the soy milk at breakfast, then sometimes soy yogurt, and soy lattes at Starbucks, and tofu in stir-fry, and Tofutti ice cream bars in the evening. Cut it all out, and the problem went away immediately. Crohn's Disease often recurs in one's 40's, and I was braced for a few months of invasive tests and then possibly steroids and diet restrictions to treat it, but it was just the soy.

I am very grateful that none of these things turned out to be as serious as I thought they were going to be. I am incredibly thankful for the continuing good health of my aging body, touch wood. I am sure I will come up with new things to worry about, but today I stop and reflect that none of these things are it.