I'm back

I haven't been on here since right before Thanksgiving, but I have a pretty good excuse. I can even get a not from my doctor, if I need one. Seems that right before Thanksgiving, two days before to be exact, I went to Georgia to pick up my grandkids and bring them back here, (here being South Carolina) only I started having some trouble with my left leg. Numbness, cold, very cold, and pain in the calf. I tried to ignore it because the kids and I had all kinds of plans. First, we were going to start our Christmas shopping and then Dalia and I were going to make chocolate cherry cake and a cranberry orange mold for our Thanksgiving dinner, Ronaldo was going to tear up all the bread for the stuffing (tearing is more interesting to a 6 year old boy than baking) and then we were going to go to Kings Mountain to hike the history trail again, things like that, only the leg got worse and their mother wouldn't let us start for my home until I got checked out at the local emergency room. Didn't get back out of the hospital until December 20th, minus one perfectly good leg. Well, I guess it wasn't that good. It seems that the blood would no longer pump through the arteries and vessels even though I had two stents implanted and had just had an arterial bypass. No blood flow means lots of bad things happen to the tissue. In other words, it dies, and as all us mystery writers and readers know, death is sort of final. So---that's why I haven't been around for awhile. However, I have a new one. Not nearly as shaply as the old one, and I am having to learn to walk all over again (I think learning to walk when you are around one is easier because you don't have as far to fall) but when this one starts to hurt, I can take it off and put it in a corner, which is more than I can say for the old one. This has taken some gettin used to, but I'm learning, getting stronger, and life is starting to return to some semblace of normal, so much so that I went out and bought a new car. thought both the economy and I needed a boost. So, if any of you reading this have had any experience with amputations and can or would like to offer a little advice or comment in any way, I sure would love to hear from you. In the meantime, keep your sunny side up, I'm working on mine. Kathleen Delaney