A Lesson inLife and Gratefulness
One year ago tonight, my husband was hit by a car in the crosswalk near our home coming home from the commuter train. He was thrown nearly 20 feet and is really lucky to be with us. This one event changed my life and taught me to live gratefully.
When we first arrived at the hospital he was about to be taken for a CT scan. I immediately sent out a prayer request on my social media accounts.
That CT scan was not good news. It showed a lot of serious damage and internal bleeding. It showed hip fractures and pelvic fractures as well. The doctors started talking about surgery. He was awake and laughing with us though and was not in the kind of pain they expected him to be in with the kind of damage shown on the initial CT. His doctor ordered a new one.
The second CT scan showed a separation of the pelvis both in the front and the back where the two side meet. It also showed a separation of the spine from the pelvic bones by it was small as well as a small amount of internal bleeding. They sent him to the ICU.
It was much, much less severe than the damage on the first CT scan. If I didn't know the true power of prayer before, I knew it then! Though my husband was in the ICU, I felt full to overflowing with a kind of gratefulness I had never felt before.
I was grateful that he had been spared, but I also felt grateful for the second chance this would give me. You see, before the accident I missed most family activities because I had become complacent in my own illness. Now I had to put that aside to care for him. It was just the shock I needed!
He stayed for a few days in the hospital. While in there, he had a surgery to stop the bleed that turned out to not be necessary. By the time they made the decision to go in and actually gained access to the OR, his bleed had clotted and stopped all on its own. He came home a couple of days after that.
For a month I took care of him, my 15 year old special needs son and my 26 year old mentally ill son, with the help of my oldest daughter who was traveling back and forth to Virginia Commonwealth University, where she was a senior. I was out of bed and up and down stairs and driving here and there. It was not perfect and I tired very easily, but I got it done.
Then I decided to use that gratefulness and the need to care for myself and others instead of being the one being cared for. I could have easily become a second burden on everyone, but I held onto that wonderful feeling of gratefulness and used it to make a more permanent change. That change did not happen right away. It took almost ten months before it was what I wanted it to be.
I tried taking online classes in a few areas of the medical arena different to what I had been in before. I had didn't finish any of them. I suppose because I knew in my heart that there were things I could not change.
The fact that I have almost no immune system and should avoid being in the public for the periods of time it would take me to work outside the home haunted me. I sought medical answers, I fought the migraines that came five to six times a week and I only spent two or three hours every couple of days out of my bedroom.
I still held on to that wonderful feeling and I held tightly to hope as well. And I prayed. I prayed almost constantly for guidance.
Just when I was really started to feel low, I started getting emails from a couple of employment agencies, I suppose because I had been looking for job openings in the field I was studying on another website. I notice I start getting junk or that the ads I get on social media change depending on what I had been searching for on Google.
Anyway, there was a listing that said "Work From Home," that I clicked on. That particular one did not end up being something I could afford to do because of the ridiculous upsells! I lost almost $300 on the promise that I could make that back in a month. I didn't! But it did get me to thinking....
I have a neighbor who's blog I have followed for over 10 years. She's had it for 13. She started the blog on her own using coding and Word Press, which she took classes for. So I gave her a called.
She told me that it wasn't necessary to go back to school any longer. She told me there were companies out there that did training and support of your website - if I was interested in blogging - that did not have upsells. I kept this in mind and that night I prayed about it when I put my 15 year old to bed. An hour later, I found the ad that led me here.
I spent the rest of that night and part of the next morning researching Wealthy Affiliate. I couldn't find a single negative thing about WA, so I signed up and went premium right then and there. I felt led to be here and I knew that if I was going to do this I should jump all the way in!
I had a few misgiving about working from home...so fears really. I feared the isolation I thought would come from working at home. I feared not having support and encouragement. I feared being in my own head for too long.
My fears were soon dissipating(sp) as I quickly got to know the community. I loved the way the lessons were laid out so that when you do the lessons, you build your business instead of just lectures that you take notes on and hope to remember later.
Today I stand grateful for so many things, not the least of which is Wealthy Affiliate's training and community. I have found my online home. Of course I am grateful that I still have my husband, but there is so much more.
In the process of trying to review different treatments for my blog on migraines, I found one that worked not only for that, but also for the chronic pain from my other diseases and for my immune system deficiency as well. All of this happened in a little over two months!
I spend time in my bedroom only at night when I sleep and if I get a migraine, which this new treatment had stopped. Before I found it, I had migraines about six of every seven days in a week. I actually feel like a "normal" person again.
So, today, the anniversary of the event that changed the lives of everyone in this family, I am celebrating a gratefulness that overflows like a dam that has failed. A dam that was made up of my fears, my frailty and the complacency I was living.
The following quote sums up the way I am living my life now.
"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Are you living as if you were going to die tomorrow and learning as if you will live forever? If so, how? If not, why?
I thank you for taking the time to read this post and I wish you all a fantastic weekend!
Anita
Recent Comments
31
Amazing story. Really a great story of gratitude also.
Glad you are here.
Not only to relate this of course.
Thank you
have a great weekend
Anita, Now I know why I liked you from the start and since have come to love the way you are so helpful. Now I understand,,,you are a wonderful person and I thank you and wish you and your family so much good.
Thank you so much Jean Louis! Your words are so kind.
I think you're a pretty god person, too!
Have a wonderful weekend!
What a wonderful, beautiful story. Thank you for sharing with us!
Although I still struggle with it on a regular basis, I recognise that simple gratitude can have an amazing effect on one's life. There's a book that I like called "Thank and Grow Rich" (yes, Thank, not Think) which discusses the way that it can change our lives.
It can be tricky. I have struggled in the past with a lot of negativity, so it takes some real work at times, but when I am in "the Zone" it is an overwhelming feeling that I call a "joy buzz". At those moments, I'd swear that reality literally warps around me, making it impossible for anything bad to happen.
I've heard of the book Craig. I think I read it in a women's church group I belonged to when my kids were younger.
It can be a struggle to fight the negatives, but is so worth it. I know that feeling that you have described here so well. I have walked around like that since I found WA>
Have a good weekend!
Hello Armlemt
Such an emotional piece.
I had to take time out say to you.
You did the difficult things while they were not easy. You also did great things while were not small and still doing it as you celebrate the one year . A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
And you did take it one step at a time. You Believed in yourself! You have faith in your abilities, which I acknowledge and know it's not easy.
You have a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers that gave You the level of success and happiness You are experiencing to be where You are right now and want to be in the future.
Take a BOW!
This is your moment.
Own it.
I will be celebrating this one with your and your family! LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of LOVE to you and your family
Love and Laughter
Debbie
Sorry, I realized that I didn't fully respond and I don't want that to happen. I wanted to tell you that I am so sorry you had to go through that with your dad. I hope he is much better now.
It can be hard to remain grateful if you let negativity in. I fight this by finding at least one thing around me either in nature or in my personal life to be thankful for and wonder in every day. Some days it was a raindrop or a blade of grass, but I made myself concentrate on that. I do the same if I start feeling negative of down or discouraged.
Ig you make this a habit and then meditate on that one thing for at least 15 minutes, you can better fight the things and life that get you down.
Have a wonderful weekend!
wow Anita, glad things just keep getting better and better there for you! I nearly lost my dad last xmas, I'm feeling the whole 'second chance' thing this year too!
as for no immune system, I was like that at one point, it's no joke catching everything - the whole body is so caught up dealing with every new infection that it is hard to make progress on other fronts - I was lucky at that time to be told about echinacea tincture - and found a very good quality one - I never caught anything again! I haven't even taken it the last couple of years, but now I do a lot of garlic and I walk about the store where everyone is coughing and wheezing and I'm immune.
By comparison at the time I was at a nursing home for old folks [while still in my 30s!] and viruses fly around there all the time, they would catch the winter vomiting bug, pop their head in the door to say they'd had it and wham I'd have it 10 times worse, I even lost the ability to move my middle fingers and toes with a vomiting bug, that is a low immune system - but I got it all back, and that's the power of echinacea to prevent any of that again :)
Keep taking care of yourself too ;)
I have tried that in the past Mary, before I was diagnosed with CVID. It did nothing for me. You see, my immune system is missing a key blood component. The particular component I am missing is immunogammaglobulin g (Ig).
I receive infusions of Ig from human blood every four weeks. It makes a world of difference! When it was getting to a critical point, I was a medic. I would work one day and then I'd be out for weeks with pneumonia or the stomach flu or whatever.
This was around the time I was diagnosed. I still get infections much quicker than the average person, but they don't get as severe. The year I was diagnosed, I was treated for pneumonia 6 times. The infusions allowed me to work in a fairly normal way. I would get sick now and then, but it would be for one day as opposed to two or three weeks.
Back then my body still produced a little bit of Ig. It doesn't produce any now. They went up on my IVIg by 40% last month. It's hard because your body treats the Ig like a foreign invader when you first get the infusion (and this is every infusion). I go through rejection syndrome like someone who has gone through organ transplant, just on a smaller scale and it ends after the Ig has been assimilated.
I have to watch where I go when I go out in public. I wouldn't want to be in a nursing home or hospital ER during flu season, but I can live a full and rich life and for that I am grateful!
How powerfully inspiring. I am happy that your husband is alive and well. I can only imagine what you all have been through.
God is good!
David
It was a scary ordeal, especially the night it happened and the day afterwards. It all turned out pretty well though and we all learned things about ourselves and each other.
Anita, Thanks for the share and we must all make decisions, live, and love like we only have one day to live. I am happy for you and your family and agree that dealing with personal and family member health issues can be draining in many ways. Jay
At that point jay, just going for a doctor's appointment was draining for me.
We both learned a lot about what the other person goes through because we had to swap roles. The patient became the caretaker and the caretaker became the patient.
I understand and appreciate what my husband has done and sometimes still does for me. He understands what it is now not to have the energy to do even normal activities we all do everyday, even when that's all you want to do.
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Remarkable story Anita and yes, tragedy brings us different things in different ways at the craziest of times....it's how we get up off the floor and respond that matters. It sounds like you got up, smacked it in the face and said I'm still here. Good for you!