What an honor.

It's not something that happens very often. To most people, we're a vague memory on one of the worst days of your life. We don't often get to find out the outcome of the time we spend with you. Was our diagnosis correct? Did we do everything right? Did we make you better? Did you have any idea how much we cared?

However, last Tuesday, we had the honor of meeting a patient who, over the past year, we've thought of often. She was 10 weeks pregnant and had announced to her Latin Impact exercise class that this would be her last night teaching... when the lights went out, and the gunfire began. In the aftermath, she lay on the floor, bleeding from two gunshot wounds, wondering if she and her baby would survive.

It was a story the media loved. Pregnant fitness instructor shot, survives, has healthy baby boy 7 months later. She graciously gave countless interviews, bouncing the curly-haired cherub on her knee, her expression clearly saying, "Screw you, coward. We're still here." In one last media blitz on the incident, just following the one-year anniversary, a local trauma center honored the EMS crews who responded on that night, and 2 (well, really 3) of the survivors. It was very touching that a former co-worker actually flew back from his new home and job in Florida, to meet a patient he cared for over a year ago, shake her husband's hand, and lay eyes on the baby who made every bit of painful physical therapy worth it.

From tragedy, one happy ending.

Story here.

I'm not dead, just... floating

Geez, where does one begin when so much time has passed? There's been fun. There's been love. There's been birth. There's been death. There's been a lot of work and daily life and monotony in between. Let's see if I can condense it into one of my beloved bulleted lists, and promise never, ever, ever to be gone this long again.

• Married my soulmate in April, on the day in between our two birthdays. Sweet, huh? I've known him for 16, almost 17 years, and we were engaged 2 years before we took the leap. Needless to say, I was damn sure of what I wanted from life by then, and I'm so freaking happy these days you'd want to slap me. Really. It gets obnoxious, all that gushing about how wonderful my husband is. He makes me laugh until I wheeze like Muttley, he gives me goosebumps, he gives me comfort and he loves my dimply sarcastic ass.
• Just prior to that, we spent 2 heartbreaking weeks apart, as he sat by his mother's side; first in a hospital, then in a hospice, watching her slowly slip away.
• Seeing my best friend hold a newborn (hers!) was the most surreal experience of my life. She's a crazy dog lady like me. Well, now she's a crazy baby lady who sings and coos and turns all mama bear, and I still can't quite wrap my mind around the new her. And I love it for her.
• I got a new car.
• I wrecked my new car.
• I cried off and on for 2 weeks.
• I got my car back from the shop and it completes me.  Every time I see a deer, I fucking cringe and swear out loud, because avoiding one of those idiot creatures in favor of a guide rail is how I did almost $8,000 worth of damage to my baby. Not to mention the damage to my once-brazen confidence.
• I'm learning how to golf and I am pleasantly surprised that I am enjoying the hell out of the whole experience. Hell, I'm not getting any younger. I might as well learn something I can do in my old age.
• That picture above? That was today. There were so many things I saw out there that took my breath away: swarms of tiny turquoise-blue dragonflies alighting on my blue Dragonfly (yeah, I named my kayak, big woop. Wanna fight about it?), tiny birds suddenly in a feeding frenzy over me and the water, some flying by so closely I could hear whiffwhiffwhiffwhiff as they dive-bombed on by. The lady swimming her dog and talking to her just like I talk to mine "Good girl, good little swimmer you are!", said with such love that I had a sudden pang of guilt for not having my sweet little shadow with me - then remembering that this was the first time since last summer I had been to the lake without her.

I can't think of anything else major to report now. Life is good, often too good. I look around and wonder when I'm going to wake up from this wonderful dream, then I do wake up, and it's even better. Obnoxious, huh?

Life is good.