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Published: Sep 16, 2005 01:40 PM
Sat - December 13, 2003
If I Could Save Time In A Bottle ...
Life throws curve balls. Expect them,
but don't be thwarted by them.
Last
month, a friend and I had a nice conversation about our mutual plans to spend
the holidays with family and friends. He was in good spirits. And who could
blame him? He'd recently been promoted. His daughter was celebrating her first
birthday. At 35, married, and in excellent health, he felt like his life was
headed the right direction.
The next day he lay in a hospital intensive care unit fighting to survive.
He awoke that morning feeling ill and congested. By noon, the congestion had worsened into acute respiratory distress. They rushed him to the hospital, put him on oxygen, and ran the usual (and the unusual) battery of tests. All of them inconclusive.
Other symptoms started showing up. Problems with his liver. Problems with his heart. Problems with his kidneys, his lungs, and his blood levels. More problems than any one cause would suggest—though every conceivable cause was explored, evaluated, and eliminated.
No one knows exactly what happened. A viral infection of some kind, doctors think. Very virulent. Very rare. They kept him in the ICU for weeks while his family sat a silent vigil. Although he is now recovering at home, able to breathe without oxygen, it may be many weeks before he feels anything like himself again.
We joke that time is a commodity we lack, but we really don't believe that. Aside from lamenting the frenetic pace of daily life, we think we have plenty of time to save for retirement. Plenty of time to take a trip. Plenty of time to spend with our wives, our friends, our sons and our daughters. We covet the notion that every one of our tomorrows will, more or less, resemble our yesterdays and our today. When life throws curve balls and catches us up short, we feel shocked and betrayed. Like another friend—a medical student—who really did develop the scary disease she read about in class. Or my father who suffered a debilitating stroke at 50.
We can't live in fear, but we shouldn't live in denial either. Unexpected things can happen even to good people. So this morning, after I write this down, I'm going to hug my wife and tell her how much I appreciate her. I'll probably have many more years to show and to tell her that. But why wait?
The next day he lay in a hospital intensive care unit fighting to survive.
He awoke that morning feeling ill and congested. By noon, the congestion had worsened into acute respiratory distress. They rushed him to the hospital, put him on oxygen, and ran the usual (and the unusual) battery of tests. All of them inconclusive.
Other symptoms started showing up. Problems with his liver. Problems with his heart. Problems with his kidneys, his lungs, and his blood levels. More problems than any one cause would suggest—though every conceivable cause was explored, evaluated, and eliminated.
No one knows exactly what happened. A viral infection of some kind, doctors think. Very virulent. Very rare. They kept him in the ICU for weeks while his family sat a silent vigil. Although he is now recovering at home, able to breathe without oxygen, it may be many weeks before he feels anything like himself again.
We joke that time is a commodity we lack, but we really don't believe that. Aside from lamenting the frenetic pace of daily life, we think we have plenty of time to save for retirement. Plenty of time to take a trip. Plenty of time to spend with our wives, our friends, our sons and our daughters. We covet the notion that every one of our tomorrows will, more or less, resemble our yesterdays and our today. When life throws curve balls and catches us up short, we feel shocked and betrayed. Like another friend—a medical student—who really did develop the scary disease she read about in class. Or my father who suffered a debilitating stroke at 50.
We can't live in fear, but we shouldn't live in denial either. Unexpected things can happen even to good people. So this morning, after I write this down, I'm going to hug my wife and tell her how much I appreciate her. I'll probably have many more years to show and to tell her that. But why wait?