Help

There has been an amazing show of help since we made the choice to have the surgery. My bio-Mom, Jan came out for 10 days and stayed with us, took care of the kids, cooked, cleaned, made sure all we had to worry about was the surgery and recovery. She's pretty amazing. She and my father were high school sweethearts who wound up pregnant, and after a long hard choice, she put me up for adoption. We found each other when I was 25, so it's been a long time now. She and her husband live in Texas so we don't see her often, but when the chance occurs, it's like magic. She's very much my mom, same laugh, same sense of humor, same off key signing, it's wonderful having her around. It was hard to say good bye.

Our children attend a Montessori nearby, which is great, if you ever live in Hillsboro, Oregon, this is the preschool you want your kids to attend. Soda isn't in Kindergarten yet, but she can read and write 5 letter words and do math, blows me away. The parents are very cool and very kind. One parent in particular, Rebecca, arranged to have everyone cook for us for many weeks, it's saved us frankly, because of my low energy I can't do a damn thing, so having dinner done every day is a life saver.

So in this sense, there is of course the greater gift of seeing the good side of humanity, so much kindness and effort. I promise to pay it forward when I recover.