The most beautiful place in the world

I am home from the hospital.  Yeah!  The last two weeks have been strange.  Ever since I began my last round of chemotherapy two weeks ago my health went into a a steady decline.  As I try to remember the events these last two weeks it all seems fuzzy like a dream.  Eventually I ended up in the hospital with a serious condition called "Tiphlitus".  It pushed me closer to the veil than I wanted.  I shouldn't complain.  It is those times when I am pushed to the very edge that I have had the most sweet spiritual experiences in my life, and I am grateful for those.  However, as a general rule,  I would like to live my life just a little further from that edge.  Thanks to the prayers and faith of family and friends, the skills of doctors and nurses and the intervention of God, my body has begun to mend.  I have a ways to go still but yesterday they felt I was well enough to finish my healing at home and I was discharged.

Santa Claus or Eric...hmm

One of the effects of tiphlitus is extensive abdominal swelling.  I have been blessed in my life to never really struggle too much with my weight.  I really take no credit, just the hand I was dealt.  What a strange experience to be transformed nearly overnight from a size 34 waist to a size 44 waist!  And to go from 175 pounds to 215 pounds.  Very weird!  Maybe I'm turning into Santa Claus?  It has gone down quite a bit now but I still wonder who I am seeing in the mirror.  It's like looking at myself in a funhouse mirror.

View from my hospital room

While in the hospital at least I was blessed to have a room with a beautiful view.  That was nice.  However I think that I prefer my current window view even though somewhat less spectacular.

A view I prefer

Years ago, when I was in dental school,  I had a patient who had traveled nearly everywhere in the world with his job.  I was very untraveled at the time and so I asked him one day, "What is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen in all your travels?"  He thought for a moment and then said, "The most beautiful thing I have ever seen is what I see at the end of a long trip when I walk through my front door".  I have never forgotten that and that is how I felt when I walked through our door yesterday.