"Family Dinner"

Tonight was "Family Dinner" :). Every once in a while about ten or so of us get together and order take out and eat around a huge table in the Common Room. We ordered Chinese food and some Indian dishes too. It's always fun getting to sit around with everyone and feel at home by eating a meal together. We all get to know each other a little bit better and we always have some great laughs together. Bret, Marg, Derek, Corky, Mitesh, Vasant, Gabe, Matthew, my Mom, and I were all shoved into the Common Room eating a delicious Chinese meal. It was pretty funny because once all of us got our food we all went practically silent. We were all so happy and content with our meals. Once we had all finished eating Matthew asked a very interesting question. He asked, "On a scale of one to ten, how glad are you that you came to India to do this treatment?" We then went around the table answering with whatever number we believed. Generally you could say that it ranged from a 6 to a 10. That is about the standard range if you were to ask anyone who's been here I think. Asking this question changed the mood of the Family Dinner, but it was really interesting to hear every one's answers and reasons. We talked about how different expectations are for spinal cord injuries than diseases. The main thing anyone with a disease comes here with is to stop the progression, anything else beyond that is just icing on the cake. With spinal cord injuries they hope for something, anything, to come back. We had about an hour or so long discussion about everything and it was really eye opening to see how similar but different we all are. It was really nice because all of us knew that whatever we said, we knew that someone else in the room would understand it better than someone back home. We all agreed on the fact that this trip has been bittersweet. Leaving home was really hard, but knowing you are going to try something to hopefully get better made it worth it. Now that we are here it's going to be really hard to leave because we have met so many amazing people, who can somewhat understand what you are going through and we want more treatment rather than giving it a break and going home. We want more now. Hopefully we get to have another dinner again next weekend. :)