Thanks for your thoughts, Basil. Yes, not always easy or possible every day, but looking for the positive is crucial to managing any chronic disease.

Thanks, Debra! I really appreciate your thoughts. And boy, do I know how it hurts to bang a finger. I hope you are able to stay well and keep fighting. Your encouragement means a lot to me.

That’s a great story! It’s so heartening to know, in the midst of so much bad news every day, that such good people exist in the world.

Thanks, Kathy.

I couldn’t agree more with your wisdom here, Evie, about not dwelling on the possibly catastrophic what-ifs. That way madness lies.

I also want to underscore your point about how we are sustained in catastrophe by loving friends and family, and sometimes even by kind strangers. I just read a very moving story in today’s Globe that provides evidence of this once again. A Milwaukee couple discovered that their eighth child had a disfiguring, brain-damaging birth defect. Just about the only surgeon in the country who could tackle it is at Boston Children’s Hospital, and the surgery was scheduled around Christmastime. Through the on-line home-schooling network, the family found a family in Northboro–complete strangers, really—who volunteered to move in with relatives and let the entire Milwaukee family take their house for the several weeks they’d need to be in MA, over Christmas.

So far, it looks like the surgery was successful.