As 2011 is coming to an end lets share our hopes and dreams for the New Year.
Where has your SCS brought you this year and where do you hope to be in the New Year?
We all come to this meeting place looking for information, friends and relief of pain.
Please share what 2011 has been and where 2012 may lead you.

Sandy Kay

What a great thread!
Being the 'family' that we've become, there have been so many ups and downs shared between us...the excited nervousness of getting the trial implant, the joys of successful implants, the disappointments and frustration when something doesn't go right.....and the day to day struggles and triumphs of living with chronic pain. We carry a heavy load.
I've never in my life known anyone who has the strength and determination as we do here at our little forum, this place we can all come to and share... understand one another without having to explain anything.....and just 'be' ourselves, lifting one another up and strengthening each other so that we can carry on our lives with our families and responsibilities, without the frustration of thinking that nobody understands what we really are going thru.

2011 has been a year of growth for me. When I look back at how I was doing the year prior, I realize that I have come a long way for the better, even tho it usually doesn't feel like it. I had to take 3 months off from the forum this summer because of circumstances in my life and being overwhelmed with family matters. I wasn't able to come here to my safe haven and I missed it very much. Every day is a slow progression and each day is a struggle of it's own, but when I remind myself of how horrible things were prior to SCS, I am grateful that I am not there anymore.

In 2012 I hope to rise above where I'm at now so that I can 'be' more and be able to do more for others. I have great hopes that there will be unforeseen breakthru's so that everybody here will have the opportunity to reach a better quality of life. I'm excited about all the new members who have come aboard and anxious to be a part of their upcoming implants next month and beyond. I am ever grateful for our faithful group who has been with us all this time - welcoming the newcomers and being a part of this great team of supporters. Each and every person here is a link to this chain that continues to grow and strengthen.

I care so much for everybody here. You truly are like family to me.

Rae


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I hope that each one of us here on neruo talk, has a better year. We all go through so much with our medical situations. This is a family here, I feel blessed to have found this place, where love and compassion rule. Let us all find peace and better health in the new year. ginnie::

A year ago, I was just emerging from the deepest darkest spot I had ever inhabited. God and all of you, especially RAE, POOH, FIONA, JENNA, SOPHIE, JACKIEY from those days wrapped huge hugs and lots of prayerfully divine shelter of my shattered emotions so I could be lifted up. One of my favorite Groban sung tunes YOU Raise ME Up so fills my soul as I cast an eye over the shoulder.

Without all who cared, and a lawyer friend, who instructed me to hand the phone to my wife, urgently calling for me to be taken into care, whether hospital or my doc, that lonely road time I spent could have shuttered my window on this blessed world of so many in need. Yeah, I had to have help, re-orient the vision to look outward instead of within..... and the ride the ensuing 2011 has brought.

We were anxiously awaiting our Army couple, our youngest son, now Sargeant, and his wife were expecting our first grandchild.... then we drove straight through 36 hours courtesy of our daughter Em, joining my wife and I so we could reach the hospital to be with our grieving children and the in-laws we had never met in time for the stillbirth of little Lily Eden [they saved the name they had wanted to use so maybe it could be used later]. Our hearts were rent.

We moved out of the home in which we had raised all of our children.... selling it to beautiful loving people who were so kind and spirit filled in helping us make the journey away from the home we knew, bank funds replenished from the sale.

We found the joy of my outreach to others as an overflowing blessing upon the whole of this family, for in it, I was truly restored to them all. God is so good.

We found further joy, even though legalities prevented me from working for pay as I worked pro bono for others, even the people who purchased our home, and that spirit of giving heaped layer upon layer of blessing upon this family.

We finally knew the blessing of permanence of work as pro bono developed in a growing young company to a position in which I am now once again a legal executive. Blessing both the company, its members, and my family. Just this week the legalities came to fruitition with completion so in the new year my position may ripen into compensable employment.

We learned our son and daughter by marriage [that sounds so much more blessed doesn't it?] are expecting again, and THIS time all things appear to be well, and the issue which took our first grandchild away, will not take this one. Thank you God.

Farthest from least of the matters upon which I reflect, I have so much more deepened my relationship with you all, giving for it is more blessed, and receiving because it is unavoidable. You all enrich me with blessings beyond number. In you, through you, with you, and before God, I am blessed.

You Raise Me Up alongside God, and you are such a team,
Blessed am I,
Mark56

May Christmas be blessed for each and all this night and tomorrow!

Things Won’t Be The Same
MRidder © 1988

Baby Jesus, lying quietly in His mother’s arms;
watching Mama as she sang His song.
There were shepherds, there were wise men,
and the angel host
sharing wonder at this little one.

Jesus, Jesus, how the music falls sweet from your name.
Jesus, Jesus, it is certain things won’t be the same.

By the prophecy Your coming was foretold to us;
though we thought You would not come this way
for a kingdom to establish on this earthly soil
such humility does not proclaim.

Jesus, Jesus, how the music falls sweet from your name.
Jesus, Jesus, it is certain things won’t be the same.

Baby Jesus, lie now quietly while Your mother hums
with sweet softness the gentle refrain.
Yes, she love You, as we all do, with a lightened heart.
Let us praise You with song once again.

Jesus, Jesus, how the music falls sweet from your name.
Jesus, Jesus, it is certain things won’t be the same.

Jesus, Jesus, how the music falls sweet from your name.
Jesus, Jesus, it is certain things won’t be the same.

I'm sure your song is even more beautiful when sung, Mark. You wouldn't have a version of it on YouTube or somewhere, would you?

I wish you and everyone here a bright and happy 2012. I'm not sure what I dare to hope for where I'm concerned--the last few years have been so discouraging between pain and unemployment (working for now, but it's a contract job and looking very iffy). But I guess I'm foolish enough to believe that things just might work out for the better this coming year. And even if they don't, I always seem to find more comedy material that way--the good stuff is almost never as funny as the bad, is it?

Love your goofy reindeer, Rrae! (I think we might have found the same great web site for these )

And thanks for starting this thread, Sandy Kay!

Well Joan, I ddi an album of songs written by me in a studio, the whole get up, back in the years when cassette tape was the thing. Somewhere among our packed away possessions from the move last January, I have many cassettes remaining in a box. Would you be able to play one if I dug it out when we find the particular box? I would love to share it with you.

Merry Merry Christ-mas,
Mark56

I thnk we must have some device somewhere that still plays those!

Well! I just drove accross town to drop in on a mando-friend's party, and all I wanted was a cookie! There were all kinds of tasty things both to eat and drink, but what I wanted more than anything was a good cup of coffee and a cookie. There were none to be had. But as Scarlett O'Hara said, "I'll think of some way to get cookies. After all... tomorrow is another day."

Well, she said something very similar to that. Maybe she was talking about cupcakes or pies, or something, but she said it!

I should have gone to Mark's house instead...I heard they were baking cookies over there...

Mors Sur Flode Kager to be more correct, although the Danish charater set is not in this writing, so there are some typos...... even so, we waited and waited for you Joan and you did not come. Tomorrow, we will frost them. Some were given away today as gifts, for they are wonderfully tasty straight.

Our door is open to you Joan! We even have coffee, but it is a long drive from PA to our home.....

Come visit some time!
Merry Christ-mas!
Mark56

You're such a sweetie-pie, Mark. Oh wait, no, you're a singiing Pop-Tart...silly me!

Seriously, I think that the reason I'm feeling so hopeful going into 2012 is that finally people are listening, and coming up with new ideas. Of course there's the upcoming SCS trial, instead of yet another anticonvulsant and antidepressant cocktail that turns me into a human dialtone.

But also, and this is what I was alluding to before, Rrae: I had a checkup on my hip replacement a few weeks ago, and something different happened: they didn't blame my hip pain on the neuropathy or say "well, maybe you didn't work hard enough in PT" or any other number of excuses. I am having a three-phase bone scan, and also this: http://www.ajronline.org/content/185/4/940.full. I don't know if any of these will help, but at least they're trying, and that's all I ask.

And sure do hope that everyone else here gets the same chance.