My sister hates my shoes
My sister is in the hospital again; after a full day in the emergency room, she's now been admitted to a room and is (hopefully) sleeping comfortably. Without going into the horrid details, this has become an all-too-familiar routine for her. If all goes well (and I believe it will), she should be out of the hospital tomorrow, or Wednesday at the latest.
I could write a series of posts about her suffering, her strength, and her resolve, but I won't, mainly because she'd kill me if she knew I had blogged about her medical problems.
I could write a series of posts about how our barbaric health-care system has branded her "uninsurable" and thereby has cut her off from the otherwise unaffordable therapies and surgeries she needs in order to survive, but I won't do that either, for the same reason.
I could write a completely separate series of posts on how the uninsurable with chronic diseases are shuffled from one doctor to another, one crisis to the next, with no one shepherding their overall treatment, leaving them even more vulnerable to inadequate care, missed opportunities, and misdiagnosed complications. But I'll save that for another day.
Instead, this post is about my shoes.
These Timberlands are the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn:
Yes, they're worn and busted, but they're comfortable. I've long procrastinated on the task of buying new shoes because a) I'm a creature of habit, and b) I absolutely despise shopping. These shoes are so worn, the soles are falling apart:
And here:
Today, while my parents and I were visiting with my sister in her hospital room, my mother turned to me and said, "So, what do you want for Christmas?"
I replied, "I need new shoes." I showed her the soles.
My very ill sister, sitting there in her hospital bed with tubes and wires protruding from her, looked at my pitiful shoes and said, "Those things look like rejects from a rescue mission. And you make how much??"
At that point, I knew she'd be OK.