The Richest Man In Town

That classic line from the last scene of It's A Wonderful Life keeps coming back to me. George Bailey's brother comes back from the war, and toasts his big brother George, "the richest man in town." We all know the story, and we know George Bailey wasn't rich by monetary standards. He was rich in love and friendships. After this past Christmas weekend, that's how I feel. Like the richest man in town. I'm not rich by monetary standards either. These days, just the opposite.  But I am rich because I am loved.

I'm no George Bailey. I'm not a saint who's spent his entire life thinking only of others and making sacrifices for them. But the whole town is coming out to help me anyway. That's what you call grace.

We spent the last three days with close friends. But this time, there were no speeches. I had no prepared remarks for them. We just wanted to be together. I expected to be, as I put it in an earlier post, "an emotional puddle of goo" for the entire holiday season. But Christmas was different from Thanksgiving or other recent gatherings since my diagnosis. Everyone we saw was fully briefed on everything, so there was no real need to "go there" much.

I feel like I'm coming down from the emotional high I was on for so long. And that's a good thing. When you're flying high, you can fall a long way. I'd rather be even keel than up and down, and it feels like I'm getting back there. Probably another sign of the Lupron fading, but I'm sure it's also just the natural ebb and flow of emotions.

I did have one bad emotional moment this morning, though. I was trying to take our dog to the vet. He's old, and has bad hips, so he has a hard time jumping up into my Rav4. So I open the garage door for him to give him more running room. This morning, the leash slipped out of my hand and he ran away. I chased him, literally screaming for him to come back, but he wouldn't. He was scared to jump in the car. If not for the fact that his leash got caught in a crack in the curb, I might not have been able to catch him.  But I did manage to get him back, thank God. I was so shaken, I cried almost all the way to the vet. If not for the Lupron in my system, I would still have been very upset of course, but not in tears. So it is still affecting me, hopefully in good ways too.

One friend in particular really made me feel loved this weekend by showing a desire to protect me. That meant more to me than I can possibly say. I hope you know who you are.

I'm probably the only person I know who can say I lost weight over Christmas weekend. I weighed 125 this morning and Saturday morning. It seems like any time my normal eating pattern is broken up, I lose weight. I thought I ate a lot this weekend. But I got a lot of great chocolate for Christmas, so I'll make it up! Some of the problem might be the fact that I'm so active when we host people. It's a lot of work, so I'm probably burning more calories on those days.

This has been a life changing year, obviously. Unless something comes up, I think my next post will be a look back on this past year. We all tend to do that at this time of year, but for me, 2015 has been one for the books.

My final proof that I'm the richest man in town is the fact that you're reading this journal right now. The fact that so many care about anything I have to say is a miracle. The fact that so many more care what happens to me is more than I can wrap my head around. You probably have a bigger bank account, but I'm the richest man in town.