New Year

I have a friend who was having a pretty rough go of it. He had been diagnosed with cancer a few years previously and undergone very serious treatment, including amputation, months of chemotherapy, home health, the works. He and his young wife had the foresight to set aside some sperm so children would remain an option for their family. After a coupe of years in remission, he and his wife spent months trying to get pregnant, lost one of the babies, and finally succeeded. Sort of. The pregnancy was brutal, putting his wife on bed rest for something like the last four months. From the second trimester, they could tell the baby had complications with his heart and only time would tell how that all would shake out. 

They had the baby, and he is beautiful and amazing and had the major heart and lung complications they had anticipated, and some intestinal and kidney issues they hadn't expected. While they lined up a top notch surgeon and worked to get their little guy strong enough to make a cross-country trip for the surgery, he remained in the NICU at a regional specialty hospital, about an hour from their family home. They spent their entire weekends at NICU with him, as many days as possible, and every evening. 

One night, as they were driving home, there was a massive automobile pile-up on the Interstate. They were struck from behind by a semi-trailer truck with a force so great, it tore the bed off their full size pickup truck. 

A few days later, he and I were talking and he told me that after the truck hit them and he and his wife had climbed out of the pickup basically intact, he had looked at her and said without an ounce of sarcasm, "We must be the luckiest people alive. That truck could have killed us." 

On the first day of the New Year, a year we were anxiously anticipating to help us leave behind the losses of 2011, we found ourselves carrying a very sick little girl into the Kansas State University emergency veterinary clinic. Things went quickly from bad to worse as our little girl went from being simply lethargic to collapsing on the exam table. As I sat there with my head buried in my hands, anguished and heartbroken, expecting the very worst, thinking over and over, "why me?" and "I can't take another year of loss like the last one," that little baby and the amazing medical staff cranked her heart back into action. 

Each day, that little girl makes strides toward recovery that amaze every last one of us. When the Vet tech carried her out to meet us for a visit yesterday evening, her first full day of consciousness, I leaned in and she gave me a quick little kiss and reminded me once again that I can either frame the first two days of this new year as a harbinger of bad things to come, or I can take them as a mantra for this new year that even in our darkest times, we will survive. 

My young friend's wise words have echoed through my head these past few days. We are either tragic victims, or we are the luckiest people alive. The choice is ours.