It is what you make it...

Over the past week or so I have spent quite a lot of time visiting the hospital. One of my closest friends had surgery a week and a half ago that went from "it will be a minor operation and you will go home tomorrow" to "oh it was 9x worse than expected and in the hospital 5 days on heavy pain meds"...and even after 5 days I wondered if it was a good idea to be sending her home. She's on the mend now and is recovering at home, but I still try to see her every other day or so.

I have spent a good deal of time with her over the past 2 weeks from the hospital to home. She is one of my closest friends so it is not difficult for me to spend lots of time with her in general, but it is so hard to watch someone I care about struggle so much and be in so much pain and not be able to do anything about it. It feels so helpless.

While she was in the hospital she made the comment of "thanks for coming, not many people like to come to the hospital". Hospitals don't really bother me that much aside from the heeby-jeebies I get from thinking about MSRA resistent bacteria. Especially when the soap free hands dispensers say: not effective against c.difficile. Curious name for a difficult to get rid of bacteria. Granted I did want to go to medical school in undergrad up until I discovered a love for organic chemistry (yes i am weird). I mean I struggled in my bio classes cuz i was so bored and did my organic chemistry home work to procrastinate. I finally switched majors and decided not to be pre-med.

But I still have always been fascinated with medicine and highly respect what we even are able to do with modern medicine. I mean people can go in for SURGERY where they cut a person open, sew them back up...and then many times will get better. That is pretty amazing. No...it's not perfect. Trust me...i'm quite aware of how imperfect surgery can be. And when it isn't perfect, it is devastating. But that still doesn't take away how incredible the fact that as a society we have figured out how to operate on people at all.

I thought a lot about why people are not keen on hospitals while I was there. I do think part of it is having to watch those close to us suffer so much and feel so helpless, but hospitals also fundamentally remind us of how fragile our lives are and I think many people are uncomfortable with their mortality. But the truth of the matter is that we really aren't as in control of our lives or health as we like to pretend.

Last summer I had a weird test result that dragged into a month of different doctors and tests to chase down the possibility of cancer. The chances were small and the doctors reassured me that it was most likely 'nothing'...but most likely also isn't 100%. Fortunately nothing was amiss. Literally the day after I was given a clean bill of health, I found out my cousin had a massive tumor on his leg for which he went through 6 rounds of chemo, radiation treatment, surgery last week and finally it looks like all is well. Yet it was discovered 3 weeks before his surgery.... after all the treatment he just went through...that his wife has breast cancer. Life is so much more fragile than it seems.

Many a day I know I take for granted how healthy I am, how active I am, how blessed I am with all the activity I can do and actually get out there and DO. Last week i logged 8 or so hours of activity and my training only holds more. This is such a contrast to another friend of mine who has Lupus has to be so careful about not over-doing anything. And while quite an active person, she also has learned how she needs to slow down and not push so hard. It's not easy on her.

A few weeks ago I was having a miserable run. I was over heated, dehydrated, had a side stitch, my legs didn't want to run, and I felt like throwing up. The negative thoughts started to creep in. I wanted to quit. I literally started counting all of the things that were blessings in my life...and my perspective changed as well as the run. The run became easy.

Thank you all for the well wishes on my last whinging post. Sometimes it is easy to complain and much harder to be thankful. But the truth of the matter is: there is so much to be thankful for and much to be grateful for. It is what you make it...