A brief gratitude post

I find I'm feeling fairly unpleasant toward the holidays this year.  Driving home today from a visit with my neuro-oncologist at Duke, I decided that I'd like to put a little energy into acknowledging the things I'm grateful for.

So let's start here:  the visit with Jim, my neuro-oncologist, went quite well, and I'm grateful for him.  He's a good guy who's clear, speaks to me as a human being, and comes into the meeting room carrying nothing.  He just sits in a chair and talks to me--no flipping through the chart.  He doesn't expect me to sit in the exam chair, and he's fine with us arranging the room in weird ways (for instance, Catherine sat in the exam chair today so that I didn't have to).  He also answers my emails and phone calls.

I'm also grateful for Catherine, who accompanied me on the trip.  Check out the presents she managed to squeeze into her luggage and bring in honor of my birthday (even though we'd decided we don't do birthday presents anymore)!  There are too many good things to say about Catherine for me to fit them in a blog post, so let me just acknowledge that I'm grateful.

Tomorrow I think I'll show you an updated picture of the unruly feminist cohort of toys at my office, something else I'm grateful for.