How would you see life if something drastic happened to you?

How would you see life if something drastic happened to you?

The MS story continues.....

Lately, I have been impressed to ask people just that question, how would you see life if something drastic happened to you? I am talking being diagnosed with an incurable disease or cancer or the such? It is my hypothesis that when a person is thusly diagnosed the things which used to be major headaches become minor irritations!

Shortly after I was diagnosed in 2010 with Multiple Sclerosis, my uncle is a scant 8 years older than I am, felt the urge to come from his home in Indianapolis to St Louis: to apologize for his horrid treatment towards me as kids. He was much younger than his siblings, my mother and her sister and other brother, and had almost raised as an only child.

I thought about his request for forgiveness to such treatment and this is what I told him. After my relapse, in which I was essentially rendered blind with Nystagmus, unable to walk to Vertigo so severe that it caused me to also suffer from horrendous Nausea. Not knowing what was happening, I spent almost two weeks undergoing multiple MRI’s, various test, Cat Scans, and numerous needle sticks and several bags of IV Steroids in order to get what was happening to me under control. Finally after a Spinal Tap that put me back into the hospital for a Morphine Drip to get the migraine that was caused by the Spinal Tap, under control; the doctor came into my room and confirmed that I had Multiple Sclerosis! Then I had five weeks of intense Physical Therapy to learn how to walk again, so I could return to my job as a cook.

Top that off a couple years prior while in a different hospital for High Blood Pressure, I suffered from a Pulmonary Edema and drowned on my own fluid; to wake up five days later in ICU, intubated. Luckily, I had been in a hospital when this Pulmonary Edema happened otherwise may have suffered the same fate as a friend did about three years later, when he had the same thing happen to him on his way home from work one night. Sadly he died…

So as I considered what my uncle has requested, this is what I told him… I reiterated my circumstances of the past couple years and explained that while I appreciated his sincere apology, that the things that bothered me in the past have become minor irritations at most.

I and others with just as drastic of a diagnosis or incident such as a major accident/death or similar experience changes the way a person views life and how they approach it. Tim McGraw’s song, Live Like You Were Dying, says a lot. What is ones response when they get drastic news about the health or have a near death like experience?