Click Your Heels Three Times

and say "I want to go home...I want to go home...I want to go home..."

The Good Doctor Mondo came home this week, on Monday, five months to the day when she first went into the hospital. Life is good. Allow me to rephrase. Life is fanfuckingtastic. We have so very much to be thankful for this year, her very survival being first and foremost, as well as all the support we've received from our friends -- local, virtual, bandmates, family, colleagues, and otherwise. Cliches often become cliches because at their very core, they are usually essentially true...you truly never know what you have until you almost lose it.

That's not to say that there are not significant changes in our lives, even today. The Good Doctor Mondo is home, yet she will remain bed/wheelchair/walker-bound for a long time to come, in a way we can't really measure yet. Our home looks like some combination of a medical lab/dairy. You know those huge metal canisters that hold hundreds of gallons of milk? Well, we've now got four of those in our living room/den (now known as the master bedroom), except their full of liquid oxygen. Those, plus five portable oxygen cylinders. Plus two portable oxygen devices that resemble jet packs. Plus miles of tubing. Plus large, prominent, bold red type signs outside our house warning against open flames/smoking.

Anyway, that's our lives now. A schedule of medications, trans-trach cleanings, anti bloodclot injections, it goes on and on.

Yet we're thankful beyond belief, for this Thanksgiving, we do indeed have one another. And if you just hang on tight enough, you never have to let go.

So to you and yours, spare a thought this Thanksgiving for those in your own families who may be struggling with their issues, great and small. Because you never know what you have until you almost lose it.