What's on the Menu?

I have mentioned my four women friends who meet once a month for dinner. We've been doing this for 30+ years. I came into it last, when I was 35, 29 years ago. We are tighter than sisters and have been each other's confidante and motivator ever since. As we have grown older, the various subjects of our monthly dinners have morphed through men, marriage, divorce, children, teens, dating (them, not the teens), debt (our children's, not ours), etc.

Through the years we have also aged and in the aging process we have acquired aches and pains and what I call{drum roll} "Pet Diseases." We each have something with a capitalized name: Lupus, Parkinson's, Polycystic Kidney Disease (that's mine – isn't it cute?), and Breast Cancer (survivor of). The fifth woman in our group has depression so we have capitalized it to Depression (probably from listening to the rest of us with something clinically bad enough we see special doctors that handle only that particular disease).

Our Parkinson's gal (I'll call her Parkie) was relating a story to us at dinner a couple months ago that she had with her doctor, who presented her with the following scenario:

What would you do if God showed up with a plate of "the disease of the week" and offered you to replace your Parkinson's with what was on the plate?

That question had a huge impact on all of us, me for sure.

I just wrote a little about my friend Lois. (See Lois Leaves.) She received a Disease Plate with Mini-Stroke on it and then the plate got switched to ALS, without her even getting to choose which one she wanted.

We all will get a Plate sometime in our life, nobody is immune. How about it? If you have one thing on your Plate, would you gladly switch it for the other Plate?

I decided I would keep my "pet" disease, thank you very much.

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