Sister Friends

When we were kids our parents rented a house every summer in Bay Head, New Jersey. To say those memories are sweet is an understatement. The beach brings us joy so it was only natural when my younger sister chose the Jersey shore to celebrate her 50th birthday. Clare rented a house for four days in Point Pleasant and invited some of her favorite gals to join her.

Suann and I went down on Thursday for the day. Our sister Deirdre arrived Thursday night and three of Clare’s friends on Friday. I headed back down on Saturday with our sister-in-law, Laura. We laughed a lot as we celebrated, first at the beach and then at dinner. The love these women have for Clare and for each other is beautiful. Their kids are all about the same age and swimming connected them but love keeps them going. 

Here’s to Clare and sister friends. We should all be so lucky.

LIFE IS RANDOM LOVE IS NOTTM

What?

We are living the randomness of life at 297. The Saturday of Labor Day weekend Suann woke up and discovered she couldn’t hear in her right ear. No symptoms preceded the loss. Off she went to the doctor on Tuesday, the same doctor she had seen for a physical the week before, who in turn sent her off to an ENT. A hearing test was administered and she was told she had profound hearing loss; maybe caused by a virus but this happens sometimes and they don’t really know why. She was prescribed a two week round of Prednisone to help with the presumed inflammation. The numbers were in her favor - 8O% of people respond favorably and 60% of those folks regain must of their hearing. Any residual loss can be helped with a hearing aid.

Fast forward two weeks, anecdotal data said the hearing hadn’t changed so this time I went to the doctor with Suann. Her hearing was checked and she was still profoundly deaf on the right side and because of this, hearing aids were out. We left with orders for an MRI to see if there was a tumor causing the loss (apparently these tumors are very common) and new terms to research (ie. vestibular therapy). The MRI came back clear but she still can’t hear and her balance is off. Thankfully there’s vestibular therapy for that.

It took me about ten days to embrace the randomness of this but once I got there I knew what the answer to said randomness was - love. I am not the perfect partner by far but I get up every day and hope that my patience will last as we deal with the new normal. Suann’s path is obviously much tougher (she actually likes talking to people) but she has embraced what’s happened with curiosity, laughing at the bad jokes, getting back to real life as she feels ready, convinced that maybe, just maybe she will be in the one to two percent of folks whose hearing spontaneously returns. Until then...

LIFE IS RANDOM LOVE IS NOTTM