Lessons from Hospitals
It didn't really hit me until the doctors started giving us her odds for survival. She'd most likely live, they said, but 30% of those who have the disease do not. We slept in the hospital every night on cots beside her bed. Our daughter Ashlyn, not yet a year old, lay in the bed with tubes and wires coming out of her, bruised from dozens of blood tests, scared every time the door opened.
When the fevers were under control, she was happy and playful, thankfully too young to know about percentages and odds. Meanwhile, my wife and I learned new words we didn't want to know: lumbar puncture, acquired heart disease, Kawasaki disease, and the list went on and on.
It had started with fevers that shot up to 108 degrees in minutes. Sometimes the doctors could tell us what was wrong, other times they couldn't. So they ran tests, what amounted to over a hundred tests that included two spinal taps. I had to hold my daughter down while they inserted the spinal needle between her third and fourth vertebrae to obtain a specimen of cerebrospinal fluid.
Her first Christmas Eve was spent in the emergency room. She was admitted to the hospital for the first time on Christmas day. We never slept. I half-heartedly went to the gym every few days, mainly to relieve tension, and lived off a combination of hospital food and protein powder. My wife never left her bedside.
At night, when Ashlyn slept, I'd write articles on my laptop, hoping they made some sense. I lost my temper with nurses and kicked a preacher out of the room when he tried to use our pain to recruit us into his faith. We were in and out of that hospital for a year.
Finally, the doctors said their first diagnosis could be wrong. Forget the percentages. That's when they sent us to Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth for special X-rays and more blood tests. And that's where my perspective on the world forever changed.
It was a hellish day of tests and tears, but they finally found something. Something so simple that it had been overlooked by a dozen doctors before: fluid in her Mastoid gland. Medications helped and a minor surgery cinched the deal. She was cured. As I write this, Ashlyn's just celebrated her third birthday and has no memory of the events. But I'll never forget them.
What struck me the hardest occurred the day we found out about the cause of her illness. We left the hospital exhausted yet elated. We had an answer. We had a solution. Ashlyn was going to get better; she was going to live. In the main lobby of the children's hospital, a lobby elaborated designed to look like a magic castle in an effort to bring some sense of wonder and joy to the kids staying there, were dozens of dogs.
It turned out there was an organization there that brings pets to hospitals to cheer up the young patients. The kids were thrilled. Those that could, played with the big Labradors and coddled the tiny Chihuahuas. But some of the kids couldn't leave their beds because of their conditions, so the staff just rolled them into the lobby -- beds, IV's, machines and all. Here was a group of kids caught in a moment of joy, kids who could temporarily forget about doctors, needles and chemotherapy.
But the adult in me could see past their laughter. I knew the cold reality that reminds us that life isn't fair. I knew that a few of these kids would never leave that hospital. My little girl was going to be okay, but these kids were dying.
To say that such an experience gives one a sense of perspective is an understatement. But suddenly, in the weeks and months that followed, criticisms bounced off of me and petty worries that used to bug me fell to the wayside. What did I care that someone wrote something nasty about me? Who cares if I put a scratch on the new car? I'm a father who was told that his daughter may die, so how could anything or anyone possibly hurt me after that? My family had been through hell and we came back bulletproof.
Today, all that's just a memory. It's been replaced with something else -- anger. I look around at the adults in this country, adults who are blessed with disease-free and functional bodies, who choose to smoke, stuff themselves with unhealthy food, and refuse to exercise. I watch them and I'm filled with rage.
I want to grab them up by the shirt collars and scream into their faces, "Where the **** do you get off? Don't you realize how lucky you are to be healthy? And what are you doing, letting it waste away and taking it for granted? With all the crap out there that can blindside you - cancer, MS, heart disease - you think you need to invite disease and death with your unhealthy lifestyle?
"Oh, you don't have time to go to the gym? You want to talk about time, you lazy piece of shit? Then visit the children's ward at your local hospital. Go see the kids at St. Jude's. Ask them what they'd like to have time to do. Go see the six year old boy with leukemia. Tell him how you don't have time to stay healthy and how you just don't like to workout because it's hard and you get 'all sweaty'. Stroke the hairless head of a nine year old girl going through chemo and tell her how you choose not to be healthy and just really enjoy the stress relief a good smoke gives you.
"What's the matter? You don't like those images? Then wake the **** up and learn to appreciate what you've got."
And hopefully they'll realize that training and eating right are privileges. We do it because we can, because unlike those kids, we have a choice. We can choose to build muscle, burn fat, and improve our cardiovascular health. We have the choice whether we look good or not, whether we live a long, functional life or if we waste it all away out of either laziness or ignorance.
When you go to the gym today and you're standing there trying to catch your breath after a hard set of squats, remember how lucky you are to be there. Remember all those who would love to have that privilege. And when you start beating yourself up because you're not quite big enough or not quite lean enough, remember those kids whose only wish is to do nothing more than go outside and play.
In short, learn to relish your gift; think of working out as a celebration. Most importantly, think about those kids, and from those thoughts, teach yourself perspective.
Training, watching your diet, and taking supplements can give you health. Perspective gives you wisdom.
Got this from someone on Togoparts forums who got it from T-mag....
Just a gentle reminder.... Me and Andrew were kinda joking about smokers and their withdrawal symptoms when they are out of cigarettes.... And how easily it was to control smokers when their "stuff" are hidden by me... hmmm...
Kinda sick these few days.... The body is tired... The mind is sick of duty.... The soul is kinda empty as there's not much time spent in the natural non-urbanised environment... haiz...
It didn't really hit me until the doctors started giving us her odds for survival. She'd most likely live, they said, but 30% of those who have the disease do not. We slept in the hospital every night on cots beside her bed. Our daughter Ashlyn, not yet a year old, lay in the bed with tubes and wires coming out of her, bruised from dozens of blood tests, scared every time the door opened.
When the fevers were under control, she was happy and playful, thankfully too young to know about percentages and odds. Meanwhile, my wife and I learned new words we didn't want to know: lumbar puncture, acquired heart disease, Kawasaki disease, and the list went on and on.
It had started with fevers that shot up to 108 degrees in minutes. Sometimes the doctors could tell us what was wrong, other times they couldn't. So they ran tests, what amounted to over a hundred tests that included two spinal taps. I had to hold my daughter down while they inserted the spinal needle between her third and fourth vertebrae to obtain a specimen of cerebrospinal fluid.
Her first Christmas Eve was spent in the emergency room. She was admitted to the hospital for the first time on Christmas day. We never slept. I half-heartedly went to the gym every few days, mainly to relieve tension, and lived off a combination of hospital food and protein powder. My wife never left her bedside.
At night, when Ashlyn slept, I'd write articles on my laptop, hoping they made some sense. I lost my temper with nurses and kicked a preacher out of the room when he tried to use our pain to recruit us into his faith. We were in and out of that hospital for a year.
Finally, the doctors said their first diagnosis could be wrong. Forget the percentages. That's when they sent us to Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth for special X-rays and more blood tests. And that's where my perspective on the world forever changed.
It was a hellish day of tests and tears, but they finally found something. Something so simple that it had been overlooked by a dozen doctors before: fluid in her Mastoid gland. Medications helped and a minor surgery cinched the deal. She was cured. As I write this, Ashlyn's just celebrated her third birthday and has no memory of the events. But I'll never forget them.
What struck me the hardest occurred the day we found out about the cause of her illness. We left the hospital exhausted yet elated. We had an answer. We had a solution. Ashlyn was going to get better; she was going to live. In the main lobby of the children's hospital, a lobby elaborated designed to look like a magic castle in an effort to bring some sense of wonder and joy to the kids staying there, were dozens of dogs.
It turned out there was an organization there that brings pets to hospitals to cheer up the young patients. The kids were thrilled. Those that could, played with the big Labradors and coddled the tiny Chihuahuas. But some of the kids couldn't leave their beds because of their conditions, so the staff just rolled them into the lobby -- beds, IV's, machines and all. Here was a group of kids caught in a moment of joy, kids who could temporarily forget about doctors, needles and chemotherapy.
But the adult in me could see past their laughter. I knew the cold reality that reminds us that life isn't fair. I knew that a few of these kids would never leave that hospital. My little girl was going to be okay, but these kids were dying.
To say that such an experience gives one a sense of perspective is an understatement. But suddenly, in the weeks and months that followed, criticisms bounced off of me and petty worries that used to bug me fell to the wayside. What did I care that someone wrote something nasty about me? Who cares if I put a scratch on the new car? I'm a father who was told that his daughter may die, so how could anything or anyone possibly hurt me after that? My family had been through hell and we came back bulletproof.
Today, all that's just a memory. It's been replaced with something else -- anger. I look around at the adults in this country, adults who are blessed with disease-free and functional bodies, who choose to smoke, stuff themselves with unhealthy food, and refuse to exercise. I watch them and I'm filled with rage.
I want to grab them up by the shirt collars and scream into their faces, "Where the **** do you get off? Don't you realize how lucky you are to be healthy? And what are you doing, letting it waste away and taking it for granted? With all the crap out there that can blindside you - cancer, MS, heart disease - you think you need to invite disease and death with your unhealthy lifestyle?
"Oh, you don't have time to go to the gym? You want to talk about time, you lazy piece of shit? Then visit the children's ward at your local hospital. Go see the kids at St. Jude's. Ask them what they'd like to have time to do. Go see the six year old boy with leukemia. Tell him how you don't have time to stay healthy and how you just don't like to workout because it's hard and you get 'all sweaty'. Stroke the hairless head of a nine year old girl going through chemo and tell her how you choose not to be healthy and just really enjoy the stress relief a good smoke gives you.
"What's the matter? You don't like those images? Then wake the **** up and learn to appreciate what you've got."
And hopefully they'll realize that training and eating right are privileges. We do it because we can, because unlike those kids, we have a choice. We can choose to build muscle, burn fat, and improve our cardiovascular health. We have the choice whether we look good or not, whether we live a long, functional life or if we waste it all away out of either laziness or ignorance.
When you go to the gym today and you're standing there trying to catch your breath after a hard set of squats, remember how lucky you are to be there. Remember all those who would love to have that privilege. And when you start beating yourself up because you're not quite big enough or not quite lean enough, remember those kids whose only wish is to do nothing more than go outside and play.
In short, learn to relish your gift; think of working out as a celebration. Most importantly, think about those kids, and from those thoughts, teach yourself perspective.
Training, watching your diet, and taking supplements can give you health. Perspective gives you wisdom.
Got this from someone on Togoparts forums who got it from T-mag....
Just a gentle reminder.... Me and Andrew were kinda joking about smokers and their withdrawal symptoms when they are out of cigarettes.... And how easily it was to control smokers when their "stuff" are hidden by me... hmmm...
Kinda sick these few days.... The body is tired... The mind is sick of duty.... The soul is kinda empty as there's not much time spent in the natural non-urbanised environment... haiz...
Flowed by Wilson at
8:10 PM
