Real Life, Real Things

Hey,

I've been gone a little while from this blog.  I'm actually supposed to be in China right now, but I'm not.  This return is supposed to be therapeutic for me. 

The past week and a half has been really stressful for me and my family. A week and a half ago my cousin was hospitalized for a pelvic abscess.  He had an unrelenting fever when he checked into the emergency room and was septic with a white blood cell count under 300.  He was recently diagnosed with Crohn's and had also been taking immunosuppresants, making his condition even more serious.  A few days after being hospitalized, he had a minor procedure to drain his abscess.  An hour post-surgery though, my cousin became septic again, and things took a turn for the worse.  This all happened the day before my trip to China, so naturally my parents and I decided to skip our trip to stay with my cousin.

His surgery was exactly one week ago, and since then, I keep thinking about that hour post-surgery.  Before then, I had always felt fortunate enough to never have experienced a loss of a friend or family member.  I have experienced grief and grieved, but never grieved over the loss of a person.  Last week, I had never been so close to losing a loved one, and I don't know where I would be right now mentally and emotionally if that had actually happened. 

The medical staff was able to stabilize and "revive" (too strong of a word?) my cousin and he was moved to the ICU after he became septic.  He spent two days in the ICU and then two days in the PCU.  Now he's in a general bed and doing much better than he was one week ago.  His blood cell count and blood chemistry have s improved and his body is working really hard to help him heal. 

I'm so proud of how hard my cousin has fought and is fighting to stay alive and strong.  After being moved to the ICU, he had a few frustrating days, where things only seemed to be getting worse.  But he toughed it out and things slowly became better.  Now he's working on walking with a walker and he's learning to become mobile again.  The improvement he has had over the past four days has been emotionally uplifting, especially since my recent happiness hinges only my cousin's success.

It's experiences like these that make you reflect on how lucky you are, or that we are.  I can get up every day on my own, use the bathroom, eat, make my own food, and pretty much do whatever I want, however I want, when I want.  But because the world works in mysterious ways, some people don't have the ability, or lose the ability to do as they please, to walk on their own, to breathe on their own, or to live their life to the fullest.

Walking around the hospital, in the ICU, PCU, and general surgery floor...and seeing my cousin improve with the supportive care he's received, I've come to appreciate medicine even more. Our bodies do all sorts of messed up shit, but to see a handful of doctors rally around my cousin and work together to support him, medically/physically, makes me even more excited about who I will be able to help and what I will be able to accomplish in the future.

From everything that's happened, I've learned that life is fickle.  I want to live life without regrets.  I've thought about this somewhat recently, but only in the past week have I've been encouraged to live life actively.  Don't sit back and let life pass you by.  Work towards your goals, so you'll never have to wonder, what if?

S

Music: "Titanium" -- David Guetta featuring Sia