Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me I once was lost but now am found, was blind and now can see. Twas grace that taught my heart to fear; and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed. My chains are gone, I've been set free. My God, my Savior, has ransomed me. And like a flood his mercy reigns, unending love, amazing grace. The Lord has promised good to m His word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures. My chains are gone, I've been set free. My God, my Savior, has ransomed me. And like a flood his mercy reigns, unending love, amazing grace. The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, the sun forbear to shine. But God who called me here below, will be for ever mine, will be forever mine, You are forever mine.

2012

I'm taking no risks this year when I usher in 2012. I'm crossing all the T's and dotting all the I's. The world is in bad enough shape without me forgetting something like black eyed peas New Year's Day and salt over the shoulder. If I had a "Blarney Stone", I would kiss it. Hopefully, by this time next year, I will be a lot lighter and have gained more movement and less pain in my arms.I have been told that if I can't see it I can't achieve it. I can both see AND taste it. Somewhere there has to be a way to stop the progression of this disease.....with every taste of success, it takes something new away. It's rather like a spoiled little kid at play saying, "If you don't play my way I will go home." I would love to say to the bully, "Go on home, I don't like you anyway." but I just would view that as giving up and something deep inside me will not let me do that. Sometimes I feel a rush of total fear when I step off a curb and my ankles pop or feel stiff. I almost scream this prayer..."Please Lord not them,too"..After both knees and one hip and now the shoulders....I am I am running out of doctors who believe I will recover. The eye opener this year was when a surgeon told me he just wouldn't try it because he didn't believe he could increase my range of movement that much...Does he not realize that anything is better than nothing? I watched a lady on Dr.Oz say she would like to die because she could no longer lift her arms and she was in a wheelchair. Well my surgery is the last of March and I BELIEVE even though the thought of recovery time makes me sick at my stomach. I look at it this way, though. If God hadn't wanted me to try it, He would not have presented it to me.....This has turned into something far more serious than I wanted. I KNOW that 2012 will be an eye opener and a cure will be closer than ever before. Years ago there was no such thing as a reverse cup shoulder replacement. Now that is the thing for PD patients...so off I go to "meet the wizard, the wonderful wizard of OZ" Have a wonderful New Year and may you be ever so blessed in many ways and please don't forget to give thanks to your creator...love ya....Pokie

It's a Beautiful Day in Illinois

Saturday it is and one more day and it is rest day but one more day and my grandson Ayden will be two. The day he was born I could barely lift my arms to hold him and now we romp and play in my power chair. He is the youngest of my grandchildren and the only one to have never known me without a limp or obviously suffering pain but he handles it as only he can. Last week, out of the clear blue sky he lifted my feet and put them on the foot rest on my chair as he sat and looked up at me and smiled. Somehow at his early age he knows. I had started out to write about the past and as the words hit the page I realized nothing is about the past anymore....it is all about the future. If that future be one hour or one day, one year or a decade , why not cram every happy thing you can in to it and enjoy? Why dwell on what was? We as a society and we as a community of Parkinson's patients experience loss daily. There is no happiness in loss......SO..... stop look around you for a bright color , a ray of light, someone giggling and go in that direction instead of backwards. I have been thinking it over and my thoughts are to live the remainder of my life as simply and childlike as I can. I think my grandson has cornered the market and getting just what he needs to live on and be healthy. He lives not in excess or hate and showers love where ever he goes and so on this almost Father's Day I'm going to say, "Thank you Matt for giving me the gift of your son , my grandson Ayden," and "Thank you for all the years of laughter and joy you have brought into my life........always Mom

Monday Morning Ramblings

It seems ever apparent, as time moves us on, that so many things cause our world to take shape and be misshapen. This morning I sit here trying with all my might to get my left hand to cooperate and let me type. It curls and it freezes, all terms a "Parkie" might know. It's my left arm I do battle with and thank God for that, because you see I'm right handed and really that is the only really functional part of me left. Parkinson's is a funny disease and it likes to play around. Some day you would barely know something was so wrong and then there are days like today...I take them one and all and know that my Journey has all been Googled for me many centuries before. Some mornings I lay tossing and turning in bed until I finally get up and grab my coffee and off I go to the computer as of possessed. As I start to type all the pain goes away and the answers and some questions form for a new day. This morning this small poem came from nowhere so I copied it down and checked my email.

Tell me sweet Jesus, give me a clue. How do I be such a leader of few? Give me direction as I stumble along, trying to save and then moving on. Questions and Questions come from all sides and so few answers do I find. . So many needles in such huge haystacks, Tell me sweet Jesus, tell me please do Are the answers still out there? For the wanderings of so few. pokie 11/2008

So now on my second cup of coffee and well on my way...I'm ready to square off and face my new day. I can only hope that some of my tasks don't include running and jumping. For those are two things my body refuses to address no matter what shape I get up in. Well leave you with this rambling and wish you a good day on my Journey to 2009....