Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Thanksgiving
This is an open post to discuss all the things for which we’re thankful, big and small.
I may have more reason to be thankful today than most: First, I’m thankful to an anonymous pig who (reluctantly, I imagine) donated its aortic valve to my father, replacing his dangerously calcified human one. (Thank you, gentle pig! We hope you liked your experience of xenoplantation, and welcome you to your new human lifestyle! You’ll love settling in to watch The Simpsons with my dad: We absolutely loved that when we were growing up.)
Without a replacement, my father wasn’t apt to survive for long. But the pig valve is now happily doing its valvular job in my Pop’s heart, along with his two newly bypassed arteries and his new pacemaker. 
He’s tired, but he’s home and comfortable in his own apartment. We’re about as thankful as a family can be — to the doctors, the surgeons, the surgical team, the nurses, the hospital staff, the tradition of modern medical research that made this possible, the luck of the defect having been detected and cured in time, and above all to He who Decided that we’d be allowed to have our father around a little while longer.
What about you? Anything making you feel especially thankful today?
CORRECTION: Because this author is not truly qualified to pronounce on any matter related to cardiology, she seems to have misunderstood both what she was told about this medical procedure and, perhaps, a key word in French. Her father’s new aortic valve has not been replaced by that of a pig. It has been replaced by … something made out of veal. The author learned this over Thanksgiving dinner. She’s still a little unclear about what happened to her Pop’s heart, but ever-so-grateful that it’s working, no matter what kind of animal they put in it.
Ricochet regrets the error.
Published in General
http://rushbabe49.com/2015/11/26/properly-grateful-joy-of-giving/
Some “little” things to be grateful for:
Indoor plumbing, clean laundry, food preservation by freezing, warm, dry feet.
There are a million things to be thankful for. I am thankful for my family: my daughter who brings so much joy to my life, my husband who loves us and makes me laugh, and my father who is still hanging in there in increasingly extreme old age. I’m thankful for good health–I’m old enough now not to take it for granted, and young enough to still be beating my old 5K PR in the Turkey Trot this morning. I’m thankful to be living in the country I was born in and in this amazing and miraculous age, where food and shelter are taken for granted, and comfort and a long healthy life are normal. I’m thankful for work that allows me to support myself and give to others. I’m thankful for my beautiful home with the answer-to-prayer ground-floor guest suite where my father can stay when he visits. I’m thankful to live in a beautiful area with a beautiful climate. I’m thankful for my church and my friends.
It’s easy to look around the world and feel sad, angry, or anxious, but the number of good things around me is really overwhelming.
I’m thankful for the four wonderful young men that sat around my table today; when I look at my sons I know this country as well as my family are going to go forward. I’m thankful for the advances in medical science and pharmacopoeia that have done so much this year to ameliorate my oldest son’s affliction with schizophrenia, and pray every night that more breakthroughs come in the future. I’m grateful for a profession that corresponds to my aptitudes and that supports me no matter how modestly in a home of comfort and domestic tranquility. And I’m grateful for the internet and Ricochet that allow a rural existence to have some of the benefits I thought only were available to sophisticates and big shots in my younger years.
Claire, I am so grateful to have a husband and brother-in-law who not only love me, but who joined in for all the cooking and clean-up for this blessed day. We served 13 people–more people than we’ve ever had at our table–and we’re tired but filled with joy that we not only have the bounty to feed them, but that we can share our love and gratitude with all of them on this precious day.
It’s amazing to me that such a simple thing that brings people together, teaches a good lesson, would be shut down for any reason!
Leslie – will say a prayer for you for Monday – please keep us posted.
Is that your turkey? Yumm!
I’m reading Patrick Kennedy’s Book called A Common Struggle – he is amazing and well worth reading – highlights mental health issues – he is a fearless advocate for and suffers with bi-polar. He broke the silence code that the Kennedys have lived with for years. It seems there were many challenges that were kept from the public. Many within his family are not happy with the book – mental health issues affect so many and should be at the forefront – he is working to make that happen.
Thanks for the recommendation, Ms. Cat I will look it up on audible.
Cajun Flavored – just a little bit of heat.
I’m grateful that for the 21st year in a row I can report that I haven’t been sent to one of Hillary’s internment camps. I’m grateful that it’s still a free country for some of us, and my condolences to those who have been the innocent victims of no-knock raids.
My father and mother both died this year, at ages 96 and 91. I’m an orphan now and miss them greatly, but there are a lot of good family memories. I’m the custodian of my parents’ extensive photo collections and am having a good time scanning them for my siblings and their families.
It was probably in 1953 when I was about 5 that Mom came into my bedroom and we had the talk – about countries where people lived in fear of the midnight knock on the door. This wasn’t completely new information to me (which may give you an idea of the adult conversations I listened to) but she told how it could someday happen in our country, too. Mom gave it about 20 years. I’m grateful that she was wrong about that. She didn’t say anything more about it by the end of that period, and that was also about when our first child (Mom and Dad’s first grandchild) was born.
Maybe we’ll hold out for a few years yet, and maybe we won’t. I’ll be grateful for what we get.
It is so wonderful to read everyone’s thnaksgivings, and to realize all the common things we are together so thankful for.
As an aside, I was struck by the illustration of the “St. Jude valve.” Isn’t St Jude the patron of impossible situations?
Yes, and St. Jude, the company, is among the finest purveyors of low-profile, bileaflet, central-flow valve prosthesis made entirely of pyrolytic carbon mechanical. And they make a top-notch pacemaker, too. Apparently.