Pardon the absence...

Pardon the absence, it has been an – um, interesting couple of months. I have been a bit frazzled as life has thrown a lot of stuff at me I was not prepared for, and that most people do not have to deal with until they're a lot older.

On May 12th, 2007 I was hanging out with some friends watching a movie. Apparently a virus hit my heart and caused it to start fibrillating. I passed out and started having seizure-like symptoms. All of this is “new” to me; I have not had seizures or any heart problems before. Thankfully my friends quickly called 911 and EMTs were very close by, arriving in minutes. They took me to the Heart Hospital and things were looking bleak for several days. I was comatose; tests were showing low brain activity; there was concern about brain damage; I had a fever of 103 and they had to ice my body down to 93 for 24 hours.

What followed, I personally call a miracle. Despite things looking so bleak for those first days, I started to come out of my coma, my heart was improving, and brain activity increasing. While coming out of the coma and heavy medication, there was some short term memory loss (which is not abnormal), but otherwise there did not seem to be evidence of permanent brain damage. I remembered who I was, what year it was, and other things like that. Within a couple days of that, my short term memory was fine. The trauma left me with no memory of the incident itself, though, which I'm rather thankful for. My experience was basically waking up in the hospital and having people explain what had happened to me.

This brings me to what I really wanted to write about: I am very lucky (blessed - whatever you want to call it) to have some of the best friends in the world. If there is one thing I learned from this entire experience, that is it. Friends were coming all throughout my time there, and when they could not visit in my room (for various reasons), they stayed in the waiting room to pray or offer support, not just for me but each other. After I awoke, there was a steady stream of people, some coming by every day to spend time with me. They did all they could to communicate the situation with friends and family out-of-state and around the world, even set up an online forum to make it easier to keep everyone updated. Distant people I do not even know were thinking and praying for me, and I'm convinced it made all the difference.

The nurses and staff there were great, too. A couple weeks after being released, I was back at the hospital for a checkup and we stopped to say hello to one of them, Michael. He expressed what an amazing thing it was to see my recovery and the amount of support I had - “You have some great friends there. You'll probably think 'How can I repay them?' and you can't. Just be there for them when times are rough for them.” I thought that was some pretty wise advice. As time has gone by and I've thought back over the events, I do often wonder what I did to deserve such great treatment. I try to just live it out the best I know how.

Sorry (not really) for the sappy Hallmark card, but it's really true. I hope you're lucky enough to have some great friends in your life like I do. Don't take them for granted.