Change

My dad has carried the business card pictured here for over 10 years. The card signifies an event that was a life-changing event in my family’s lives. It is the business card of the CHOP neurologist who delivered the message to my parents of my diagnosis and prognosis. Basically, Dr. Stinkel (name changed to protect his anonymity due to the fact that he had a stinky bedside manner) informed my parents that I would probably die during child birth and if I did live, I would be plugged into all kinds of machines to keep me alive and that I wouldn’t breathe, eat, speak, walk, see, hear……you get the picture. This whole curve ball was a change that my parents had to deal with on the fly, and they did so fairly well. It changed their lives, their careers, their relationship and their perspective. Amazingly, they were able to deal with it and adapt to the change that life had dealt them.

The card also signifies the ability of us to change things supposedly unchangeable. I was sent home with hospice care because I was supposedly a “short-timer”. Hospice’s job was to make sure my parents knew how to feed me through a tube and how to give me morphine when the pain got too bad. They were useless. But rather than sit and wait, my mom changed things. She never gave up, and continued to try to get me to eat and crawl. My parents took me everywhere and we celebrated birthdays every day…..then every week, then every month. Mom dismissed hospice and made dad throw out the morphine (he wanted to keep it for himself J). Ever since that change that my mom created, I have been a pretty amazing kid. I do everything and make a difference every day.

So think about how you deal with life’s changes. They are inevitable and unavoidable but you control how you adapt to them. Be positive. Also know that you can create change so long as you are persistent and have faith in yourself and in others.