A Note About Our Meeting

Thank you Maureen for being our January hostess.  It was a pleasure to spend time with friends in your lovely home.  Thanks too for your delicious lentil soup and everyone else for their yummy contributions to our evening.  It was so nice to start our new year sharing with friends.

Our book for this month was written by Lisa Genova, who also wrote "Still Alice", a story about alzhimer's disease.  Our book, "Every Note Played", is a story about ALS  - Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis disease, also called Lou Gerhig's disease.  Although the characters in this book were fictional, the facts of the disease and its progression were well researched.  It is very hard to imagine receiving the news that you have ALS as it is almost without hope, leaving you like "an animal in a cage...shut down, shut in, turned off."  The progression of this disease can be very rapid, making "each week, a new normal."  The book was somewhat difficult to rate as the basic story of the family - husband, wife and daughter - could have been better written, but the description of the stages of ALS and the treatments was extremely well presented.  Also well handled was the importance of having a good caregiver and how hard this job is.  "On a road leading to any great achievement are a thousand missteps, a thousand more dead ends.  Success cannot be born without the life and death of failure."

Esther shared with us information she found on the author's blog about theories on preventing this disease:  Get plenty of sleep
               Get plenty of aerobic exercise
               Challenge yourself by doing things outside your comfort zone

Our next meeting will be Thursday February 7th, 5pm at Claudia's home.  Looking forward to seeing you then!  Happy New Year!