When Life Gives You Tribulations...

What do you do when the stresses of life are more than you can handle?  How do you deal with an illness that no one understands, but leaves you with the task of curing yourself.  How do you mourn a sweet kitty who was the love of your life?

About 5 years ago I was diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disorder.  I was treated with steroids and put into a rehab facility to learn to walk again. 

It was summer time and I was stuck in a hospital.  I could not lift my legs off the bed.  I could not go up and down stairs.  I had trouble even walking using a walker.  I became very depressed. 

Then one day the hospital allowed me to go to Walmart in my wheelchair.  They picked me and a few other patients up in a wheelchair bus.  I found a quilting magazine that gave me hope. I decided to make it as a sort of recovery quilt.  My room became a quilting studio.  I had boxes of scraps of fabric everywhere.  My bedside table became an ironing board.  Late at night would find me working on that quilt.  I was not able to finish it before I left the hospital.  But a couple of weeks ago I showed it to my quilting friends at our Tuesday morning get together.  They convinced me to finish it and enter it into our upcoming quilt show.  

So I began working on it, just as Mimi was losing her battle with life.  It seems fitting that I should be working on this quilt through all my stressful times.  It has been my way of dealing with illness, both my own and Mimi's.  And now that I am almost finished I feel energized and rejuvenated.  I will have it long arm quilted and it will be ready to enter into our guild's quilt show.  I can't show you all of it right now, but this is what I am working on at the moment.  Lots of scraps and applique.