Merry Christmas, everyone! And if you don’t celebrate this particular holiday, then happy holidays – for both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day ,-) Wishing you and your loved ones a lovely New Year; happiness, good health, with many moments of laughter and joy throughout!
This post is about the types of gifts that my physiotherapist, Cherif, and I inadvertently exchanged for Christmas; I don’t open any gifts until the morning of the 25th, so didn’t know – until today – what he had gotten for me…
First off, a bit of history. Cherif has been intensively treating my CRPS (see Code breaking – A diagnosis for information about this rare neuro-inflammatory disease) for quite a while now. For more than we had sessions three times a week, then a few weeks ago I received permission from my physicians to lower that to twice a week.
These are one-hour sessions, and we chat the entire time. Except when he pushes me to the point at which I literally can’t speak due to pain. He performs M&M physiotherapy, to break the adhesions inside each of my finger joints and my wrist.
This type of therapy is also meant to increase my range of motion, or at least limit its reduction, using methods which I’m unable to perform on myself.
During the time he’s been treating me, we’ve talked about my field of work (bioethics, also called medical ethics), commitment, cooking, family, health literacy (and the volume of appalling health misinformation available on-line), homes, marriage, renovations, sports, travel, and just about everything in between.
My husband and I have been together for 25 years now, but Cherif is just starting out. Since he began treating me he met the woman of his dreams, planned special dates and an anniversary surprise, and most recently set up a very detailed plan for his – surprise – proposal.
He and his love are now planning both their wedding and the purchase of a new home, where they’ll live together after their marriage. For now, he’s living alone and is always looking for good – easy and healthy – recipes, so I’ve shared many of my recipes with him.
Each time that I gave him a recipe for muffins, cookies, or quick breads – any baking recipes, really – he’d hem and haw about whether he would make it. It took a while, but I finally asked why he wasn’t doing any simple baking even though he adores thees foods.
It turns out that he didn’t have any muffin tins, cookie sheets, or any of the baking pans that I’d assumed he had at his home. So my Christmas gift to him this year was a nice set of baking dishes; and I’ll be challenging him throughout the year to try baking different types of recipes ‘-)
And his gift to me? He’d told me that he’d taken his love to a large Christmas market, selling many original gift items made by local artisans. He gave me this gorgeous hand-made puzzle; you have to move the 3 silver balls from the outer edge of the maze into the centre of the puzzle by moving the puzzle around. It’s much harder than it looks!
So we unknowingly each gifted each other with challenges that will continue on into 2018! For him it will be baking, while for me it will be using a new game to try to improve the fine motor control of my CRPS-affected hand. I’ve already decided to use only using my right hand to do this puzzle…
Thanks Cherif, it’s the perfect gift ‘-) All the best!