A New Start

When January rolls around, there is sometimes a sense of nostalgia for the good old days. I wonder if it is part of the mourning the passage of time, or fear of the unknown or just another Hallmark Moment that has been ingrained into society’s psyche. None the less, January 1st came and went and Las Cruces life for this northeastern transplant has become busier and busier, with a side of medical mischievousness thrown in.

At this point, I have taken on the role of Photography Club President. I have a really good board behind me and a really good club in front of me. My task however is a bit of a difficult  one. In one word, it is CHANGE. When I joined back in May of 2012 we had about 50 members. Since then we have tripled that number. We are looking to become a not for profit organization which will require a bit of work, including rewriting bylaws and procedures, drafting a budget and planning for the new year. One goal I set for myself was to increase the club’s exposure in the community and we have been hard a work about that (more on that effort later). We even have changed our name from Camera Club to Photography Club.

In actually, all this is a lot of fun for me. I earned a Master’s Degree in Social Work like 200 years ago but never really used the organizational, leadership and policy skills I learned in the jobs I had. Now however, they come in very handy. Everything from putting together a symposium to running a regular meeting falls under that umbrella.

Speaking of umbrellas, life always throws us a couple of storms to see how we handle adversity, stress and unexpected changes and January for me was filled with storms, medical ones. In late December I had some minor (haha) surgery, a vein ablation, to help with swelling in my leg. Well, it immediately got infected and the merry-go-round started with my going to the Wound Clinic here in town. It seemed to be improving size wise but there also was an inordinate amount of drainage (I will go no further in description lest the TMI police issue me a summons ((TMI = too much information))). In digging further (pun intended) the doctor found a large abscess under the wound and doing a culture found a highly resistant bacteria. A referral to an infectious disease doctor identified this as a bacteria that is resistant to every and all oral antibiotics known to man. At this point I was put on an IV antibiotic, after the expected insertion of a PICC line. This was to last 6 weeks without a resolution but soon there will be help on the way. Check in on my next post.

No January pictures but my next post will finish the infectious story of my health and show a nice picture or two.