Being Smacked With A Message

I've re-learned every day is a gift. I was actually smacked pretty hard with the message this week.

A colleague of mine lost her husband to a pulmonary embolism three weeks ago. He was 46. He is survived by his wife (my colleague) and his two daughters, ages 12 and 8.

I'm going to give you the short version of the chain of events. Four weeks ago, my colleague called out of work. She said her husband took a bad fall and he had to go to the hospital. He cracked his head open and broke an orbital bone (near his eye). I later found out from her he was a lifer on coumadin, due to a blood clot he experienced in 1995 after back surgery. Three weeks ago, she said she had to work from home, because she was picking her husband up from the hospital after surgery (he had blood on the brain from the fall). She expected to take him home that day. She received a call indicating he had fallen. (He collapsed in the hospital's Dispatch area). She went to the hospital, where she found out he was "code blue." He had a moment where he was awake, and said something was wrong, that his chest hurt. Despite their best efforts, he did not make it.

I spoke with my colleague yesterday, to see how she was doing, and she's still trying to process everything in her head. She repeatedly said "I just don't understand. I was supposed to bring him home." I'm glad this wasn't a face to face discussion. I had tears streaming down my face as she told me the chain of events.

Then she asked me about all things related to my experience with DVT and the pulmonary embolism, but my experience was so different from her husband's. I felt terribly I could not give her comfort or answers to her questions.

After I finished my phone call with her, I wanted to walk out of the office and hide. Escape. Run. Never once while I was in the hospital did I think I would die. I imagine that's what he was thinking, too. They would just patch him up. He would go home to his family and resume his life. I think about that poor man, and my stomach churns.

It's been a while since I've really thought about the series of events with my situation earlier in the year. I make no apologies about the self-centeredness of this next comment: That could have been me. I could have been dead, at 36.

A friend of mine said to me a couple of weeks ago, "I don't understand why you are doing the fitness boot camp. You don't like getting up early, you aren't a fitness junkie, and you don't like being outdoors. Why?" I just shrugged my shoulders, unable to articulate why exactly I decided to participate in something that is so contradictory to who I am.

If I had to answer that question today, I would say, "Because I don't want fear to cripple me." I had my toe in the grave without fully realizing it until three weeks ago, despite the numbers of medical staff, Manfriend and others telling me how lucky I was during that timeframe. I remember being terrified of every pain and ache when I first started the DDIP. I remember pulling a groin muscle in the first week and thinking I had another DVT. I was afraid of the pain and the inconvenience of the DVT and PE earlier this year. Fear can be downright paralytic. I had to mentally fight the fear through the physical activity.

That phone call on Friday was an epiphany. As my Instructor said this week, "The best things in life are not things."