A gift to myself

A friend recently told me that while undergoing chemotherapy for treatment of breast cancer, she had bought herself a present after completing each round.

This sounded like a great idea to me. It doesn't work that well for leukemia, because when you are finished with a round of chemotherapy, you are so depleted that going shopping is the last thing you want to do. I did, however, get a lot of nice gifts when I was in the hospital. And I try to schedule in something fun in connection with my frequent trips to Boston, and sometimes, when I started feeling better, that something fun often involves going shopping.

I thought of my friend's words yesterday when I went to a "brunch and buy" where the theme was hand-made holiday gifts. Everything was beautiful. I thought I would be able to make it out the door cheaply by buying a just a desk calendar with a photograph a month, but then something called me back.

It was a collection of silver watches on bracelets made of beads and big, colorful stones. I tried on one in "my" color, blue. I joked with Bev, the tennis friend who makes the jewelry under the name Big Mouth Beads, that perhaps I owed myself a hernia repair present.

Like the eye surgery that had turned out to be more than I expected, the hernia fix has involved more in the way of continuing pain than I had thought it would. I hadn't taken any oxycodone before driving to Longmeadow for the "brunch and buy," because you aren't supposed to drive under the influence. By the time I left, the site was really hurting, so I was definitely in the mood for something to pick me up.

Hence, the blue and silver watch, my gift to myself on a day when I had thought I was going shopping for other people. Oh well, these things happen.

I liked the way it caught the light on my drive home, helping to keep my mind off the pain. It looks magical.

But there is a problem: I need to think of something else to call it other than my "hernia repair watch." It's too pretty to have such a connotation.