A Year Later...

On March 24th, 2011, just about a year ago, I wrote this post regarding being hospitalized for severe anemia.  If you don't feel like clicking over, the gist of it was that it was so rare that someone be that anemic and still walking, that they had no idea what was wrong with me so did not send me home.  It was also the first of many House references on this blog.
Point is, that was a year ago, when everything basically went to shit.  Like, really severely down the crapper.  I was hospitalized for most of April and May, give or take a few days when they thought they had fixed me, and then spent June going in for infusions, being treated by a visiting nurse and treating myself with antibiotics that I injected into a PICC line dangling from my arm, which went nicely with the portable gunk-catching chest tube I had dangling from my side.  Like a purse that matches your shoes, eh?
But that was then, and this is now, and yesterday at about 3:00 (after a rough day), I decided to buy a ticket to see Bruce Springsteen at the Garden, a few hours before the show actually took place.  I think that's a pretty good illustration of how I'm feeling now as opposed to a year ago., or even a few months ago.
Bruce, first of all, was incredible.  I've seen him live several times now, in different venues and different incarnation (solo, Seeger Sessions, Fenway, etc.) and I think that last night's show may have topped them all.  I mean, the dude is in his early-60's (truly, as he sang in Thunder Road back in 1975, he "ain't that young, anymore."), but he can still go.  Hell, I was tired near the end of this three-hour show last night, and I wasn't putting forth nearly the same effort he was.  The cool thing is, I don't know how he is in other cities, but he certainly seems to love Boston (he did kind of get his start here back in the day), and Boston certainly loves him, so I'm not sure which came first, but he seems to add a little spice to his shows when he plays here.  Sliding across the stage, crowd-surfing, running all over the stage... I can't even do that, no matter how good I'm feeling.  It was, as one fan put it on facebook, "a religious experience."
And so it was, as just a year ago, I could barely breathe.  I am still on a small dose of steroids, and a "kidney vitamin," which I'll probably have to take forever because my kidneys were permanently scarred, but last night, for the first time in awhile, I felt like my old self.  I woke up yesterday thinking it would be an ordinary Monday, and ended it with an amazing Bruce Springsteen show.  I feel like that could have happened to me five years ago, but not in the last year, certainly.  Physically, I have felt okay for awhile, but it took a little longer than I anticipated to get back mentally.  So long that I didn't really even know that I wasn't there yet.
But now, I know I am.  Thanks again for the inspiration, Bruce.