{"id":6065,"date":"2021-12-01T22:06:19","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T03:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=6065"},"modified":"2021-12-01T22:06:19","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T03:06:19","slug":"still-jingling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=6065","title":{"rendered":"Still Jingling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"December 1, 2021<\/strong>
\nWednesday<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last week, when I gathered the materials I knew I needed for this season, I came across a small holly themed Dollar Store notebook that I had used for several years as a place to keep running lists of Things To Do for the Holidays. I paged through it, trying to remember how and when I had lost the focus I once had for this special time of year. The last notation in the book was labeled “Holidailies 2017,” and the numbers 1 to 31 were neatly inscribed line by line down the page. Only one, the first, had any notation, and that was only a title and a URL, indicating it had been published: Jingle All the Way<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In case it’s “TL;DR” for you, I’ll tell you that in it, I announced that one of the reasons I hadn’t been blogging very much was a kind of brain fog that short-circuited my concentration, my memory, my interest in most things. A visit to my cardiologist, neglected for two years while I walked my husband through his lung cancer ordeal, determined that I had severe aortic valve stenosis and needed a new valve ASAP.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m optimistic and full of forward motion,” I wrote of that diagnosis and the plan to treat it. “I\u2019m ready to Jingle All the Way. Come with me. Happy Holidailies!” I had the valve replacement a few weeks later, and went about my business.<\/p>\n

After almost four years, the new valve is working perfectly. I was in a clinical study, and clinical personnel would come into my imaging procedures to exclaim over my results. (“Just look at that apex!”)<\/p>\n

But then the brain fog came back, worsening over the summer and then into the fall. I took an online class to further my novel that I couldn’t keep up with because I kept misinterpreting the weekly assignments. One evening, Ron asked where the colander was, and I said, “It’s in the . . . the . . . the box for laundering the plates.” The dishwasher, a word I could not retrieve, though I was looking at the appliance at that very moment.<\/p>\n

And here we are again: stenosis of the right carotid artery. Just how severe will be determined on December 20. Again, I am optimistic. Again, I ask you to jingle along with me.<\/p>\n

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