Blogging for Brenda

Well, I just have to write about the happiest point of my trip to Barbados.  It is going on right now back home in Orangeville and I feel like I am right there.

When I had the opportunity to go to Barbados, it was my dear friend, Brenda, whom I mentioned, had said "you are going to Barbados because you can".

Now this may not seem overly remarkable, until you find out that this is what Brenda was telling me as she was lying on her living room floor, literally flat on her back and had been for the past 6 months.
With a herniated disk, Brenda had become pretty much completely disabled while she worked away at finishing her Master's degree at University of Guelph from her floor.  I could try to recount all the astonishing things that Brenda and her family endured during this time, but it would be understated and she would kill me.

So tying this into my trip here, I have to reiterate that when I left in January, Brenda was literally lying on her floor as per usual, but she also had the flu. She couldn't even hope to join me down here, as time both of us would have cherished, because although she would have been very capable of lying on a beach, (she was getting very good at floor lying),  she had no hope of sitting on a plane. So back on January 18, I dropped off some drugs for her and she cheerfully wished me well on my vacation.  No resentment noted, no guilt, no second thoughts.  As a true friend, I said good bye from the bottom of the stairs, for fear of catching the flu.

Now the reason I am talking about my happiness this week (because it really is all about me), my dearest friend has undergone surgery last Friday.  The healthcare system, that we feel moves so slowly, really sped up  as soon as the surgeon became aware of the state of her spine and the true level of pain that would be associated with this degree of herniation.

Brenda is up.  She is in less pain. She can sit and she can walk.  She can walk so well that she crossed the podium and received her degree yesterday at Convocation.. I watched this ceremony tonight on my computer. I could have cried.  All right I did cry. This link has somehow allowed me to feel a little closer to home and to this remarkable event.

Now my greatest hope is that the next time I am blogging from Barbados, I am blogging from Barbados with Brenda.

Congrats my Friend.