10 YEARS LATER

First thing I notice is I had actual hair then LOL. I started cutting it short a few years ago and have kept it that way. Also seem to not have shaved that often - dang I look scruffy. Then there is the fact I was almost 500 lbs in the first photo and now I've lost 123.4 lbs - was not going to mention how much I lost until I realized what the number was and got a kick out of it. As well Mom was alive - not in great shape but alive.

To be honest I used to have sitting having coffee with Mom as she had CTV news channel on every waking moment and I found it annoying. But what I would not give to have one more afternoon of drinking coffee and talking with her.

The weight I'm well rid of. I could hardly walk at that time after all. Now I for the most part can walk a bit. 4 or 6 blocks anyway. My knees would kill me just going across the street to get something from the store. Now the knees only kill me if I need to do stairs.

The fibro is the same. I had a span of several years where the pain was very low, but now I am back to having longer flairs and very much more painful flairs. I am just glad that I don't have flairs that last for months like some people do. I literally can't imagine being in terrible pain for that long. But I can handle the pain better now it seems, so there is that as a blessing.

One last difference I'll mention. My relatives would actually talk to me if they saw me in the store or on the street. Now they literally look away instead. The moment Mom died, I seem to have become dead to them. Only one of them ever contacts me and that is with a Christmas letter. I also send her one. Come to think about it, I will not have fun with this years letter - I will have to tell her my brother is dead.