A success!

First and foremost, a great big, gigantic THANK YOU to all those who were thinking of us and sending your prayers our way! And, hugs and kisses to Keith and Susan who did a great job spoiling our kids for eight days. (I'm sure it will take me months to get them back to "normal".)

In my opinion, California was a success and we are looking forward to a pain-free 2009! Dr. Wise was brilliant (fitting name don't you think) and gave us lots of good tools and help. I was feeling rather apprehensive to meet him, he being a genius doctor of research at Stanford University, and me being a backward country bumpkin from Nowhere, USA. But he put me at ease the minute we met and in the course of a week has become a very close friend of Dustin's. Tim, his physical therapist, is now a member of our family and Dustin has invited him to live with us! Well, maybe not "live" with us, but they have already planned a ski vacation, hiking expedition and guitar jam session to be held ASAP! Spending nine hours a day with others, sharing your pain, anxiety and intimate details can really forge a bond quickly and that's what Dustin has gleaned from this experience. Nearly 20 new allies! Men and women from all over the world, including England, Spain, France, Finland, Ireland and Scotland, not to mention all the others from the states. It was an amazing experience... amazingly hard...amazingly beneficial. We feel incredibly blessed for having found help for Dustin's CPP. It will be a long process, he has not been "suddenly cured" but we now know what to do and how to do it and having the tools we need is the greatest boon!