Being Grateful

It was a difficult process, and extremely challenging, to plan a trip to Hawaii but something we knew would be a good decision in the long run. After extensive COVID testing, a booster, uploading lots of documents to Safe Travels Hawaii and practicing every public health guideline to the extreme we are grateful to safely be in Kauai. We were worried we might not see our friend of 89 years young who has been a friend on this island with us for over 2 decades. Because she has a recurrence of a serious cancer our thoughts were such that if we didn’t visit the island, we might miss the opportunity to connect with her one last time. Therefore, we are grateful when we touched base with her several days after arrival here and found out she was in remission! Unfortunately, she fell about 3 months ago and suffered a hip fracture. Since that time, she mostly has been sitting in her condo confined to a chair and using a walker. Now this young lady was a surfer, state college swimmer, and aquatics instructor, still giving private lessons pre-COVID. So, Arienne came up with a plan. Arienne requested our friend call her orthopaedic surgeon and tell him that her two friends from Canada were on the island and would take her to the pool for rehabilitation work. The surgeon gave the go-ahead immediately and we took our friend to the pool the other day. Our friend had us bring her underwater barbells she uses for aquatics exercises and was waiting at the door ready to hit the pool. After safely helping her to the water, and carefully getting her in the pool, the smile on her face was incredible. She spent over half-an-hour with aquatic exercises then spent thirty minutes in the hot tub. We are extremely grateful for the joy and happiness this brought our friend and I suspect her endomorphins, or endorphins, were surging. Our feel-good hormones also peaked after our interaction with our friend, and we plan to take her a regular schedule as she feels comfortable with – now that is me and Arienne feeling grateful.