T-mag and the T-forums are growing at an astounding rate. To help those new to T-mag catch up and to breathe some life back into our older articles, we’ve decided to “reprint” a few here on the forum.
This article (posted in the reply below) first appeared in newsstand issue #6 of Testosterone and has never appeared on the website, until now.
Lessons from Hospitals
By Chris Shugart
It didn’t really hit me until the doctors started giving us her odds for survival. She’d most likely live they said, but 30% of those who have the disease do not. We slept in the hospital every night on cots beside her bed. Our daughter Ashlyn, not yet a year old, lay in the bed with tubes and wires coming out of her, bruised from dozens of blood tests, scared every time the door opened.
When the fevers were under control, she was happy and playful, thankfully too young to know about percentages and odds. Meanwhile, my wife and I learned new words we didn’t want to know: lumbar puncture, acquired heart disease, Kawasaki disease?.and the list went on and on.
It had started with fevers that shot up to 108 degrees in minutes. Sometimes the doctors could tell us what was wrong, other times they couldn’t. So they ran tests, what amounted to over a hundred tests that included two spinal taps. My wife and I had to help hold our daughter down while they inserted the spinal needle between her third and fourth vertebrae to obtain a specimen of cerebrospinal fluid.
Her first Christmas Eve was spent in the emergency room. She was admitted to the hospital for the first time on Christmas day. We never slept. I half-heartedly went to the gym every few days, mainly to relieve tension, and lived off a combination of hospital food and protein powder. My wife, Karen, never left her bedside.
At night, when Karen and Ashlyn slept, I’d write articles on my laptop, hoping they made some sense. I lost my temper with nurses and kicked a preacher out of the room when he tried to use our pain to recruit us into his faith. We were in and out of that hospital for a year.
Finally, the doctors said their first diagnosis could be wrong. Forget the percentages. That’s when they sent us to Cook Children’s Hospital in Fort Worth for special X-rays and more blood tests. And that’s where my perspective on the world forever changed.
It was a hellish day of tests and tears, but they finally found something. Something so simple that it had been overlooked by a dozen doctors before: fluid in her Mastoid gland. Medications helped and a minor surgery cinched the deal. She was cured. As I write this, Ashlyn’s just celebrated her third birthday and has no memory of the events. But I’ll never forget them.
What struck me the hardest occurred the day we found out about the cause of her illness. We left the hospital exhausted yet elated. We had an answer. We had a solution. Ashlyn was going to get better; she was going to live. In the main lobby of the children’s hospital, a lobby elaborated designed to look like a magic castle in an effort to bring some sense of wonder and joy to the kids staying there, were dozens of dogs.
It turned out there was an organization there that brings pets to hospitals to cheer up the young patients. The kids were thrilled. Those that could, played with the big Labradors and coddled the tiny Chihuahuas. But some of the kids couldn’t leave their beds because of their conditions, so the staff just rolled them into the lobby ? beds, IV’s, machines and all. Here was a group of kids caught in a moment of joy, kids who could temporarily forget about doctors, needles and chemotherapy.
But the adult in me could see past their laughter. I knew the cold reality that reminds us that life isn’t fair. I knew that a few of these kids would never leave that hospital. My little girl was going to be okay, but these kids were dying.
To say that such an experience gives one a sense of perspective is an understatement. But suddenly, in the weeks and months that followed, criticisms bounced off of me and petty worries that used to bug me fell to the wayside. What did I care that someone wrote something nasty about me? Who cares if I put a scratch on the new car? I’m a father who was told that his daughter may die, so how could anything or anyone possibly hurt me after that? My family had been through hell and we came back bulletproof.
Today, all that’s just a memory. It’s been replaced with something else – anger. I look around at the adults in this country, adults who are blessed with disease-free and functional bodies, who choose to smoke, stuff themselves with unhealthy food, and refuse to exercise. I watch them and I’m filled with rage.
I want to grab them up by the shirt collars and scream into their faces, "Where the fuck do you get off? Don’t you realize how lucky you are to be healthy? And what are you doing, letting it waste away and taking it for granted? With all the crap out there that can blindside you - cancer, MS, heart disease - you think you need to invite disease and death with your unhealthy lifestyle?
"Oh, you don’t have time to go to the gym? You want to talk about time, you lazy piece of shit? Then visit the children’s ward at your local hospital. Go see the kids at St. Jude’s. Ask them what they’d like to have time to do. Go see the six year old boy with leukemia. Tell him how you don’t have time to stay healthy and how you just don’t like to workout because it’s hard and you get ‘all sweaty’. Stroke the hairless head of a nine year old girl going through chemo and tell her how you choose not to be healthy and just really enjoy the stress relief a good smoke gives you.
“What’s the matter? You don’t like those images? Then wake the fuck up and learn to appreciate what you’ve got.”
And hopefully they’ll realize that training and eating right are privileges. We do it because we can, because unlike those kids, we have a choice. We can choose to build muscle, burn fat, and improve our cardiovascular health. We have the choice whether we look good or not, whether we live a long, functional life or if we waste it all away out of either laziness or ignorance.
When you go to the gym today and you’re standing there trying to catch your breath after a hard set of squats, remember how lucky you are to be there. Remember all those who would love to have that privilege. And when you start beating yourself up because you’re not quite big enough or not quite lean enough, remember those kids whose only wish is to do nothing more than go outside and play. In short, learn to relish your gift; think of working out as a celebration. Most importantly, think about those kids, and from those thoughts, teach yourself perspective.
Training, watching your diet, and taking supplements can give you health. Perspective gives you wisdom.
This got to be one of CS is best writtings ;).
When I was going through cancer those adult oncocolgy wing were truely depressing. I kind of wish I was in the childrens wing at least they were all happy and so full of hope eventhough, they knew they had a deadly desiease.
As, far as the adult wing was concern they all didn’t care if they lived or died it was bad.
As someone who spent two full weeks in the hospital “blindsided” by a chemical imbalance, this really hits home. I was the healthiest guy ever, my doctor even said that, and then I went through hell. It’s like living a second life. This is the best article I have ever read on t-mag not associated head on with training.
Yes damn fine article.
Gives the people who have never had any issues a glimpse into that other world.
Wow.
Chris: Sounds like you and your family have been through a lot. Glad to hear everything turned out ok.
I don’t have kids yet, but I’ve seen the impact having a sick kid can have on parents. I had a baby brother that died of a congenital heart defect, and it tore my parents apart inside. It made them feel completely powerless because heart transplants weren’t available back then. To make matters worse, the doctors knew they couldn’t do anything and that he was going to die, but they didn’t have the balls to just come out and say it. Maybe they saw it as an admission of failure, but my parents didn’t know what to do when he would turn blue and couldn’t get any oxygen. My dad was always a big strong guy, but seeing his son suffer like that and not being able to help him changed him. Imagine trying to fall asleep at night not knowing if it will be the last time you see your son alive. It’s 25 years later and the anger is still there.
Things like this really make you want to live life to the fullest everyday. It also makes me want to know everything so I can have all the answers for my patients, but the reality is that sometimes there’s just nothing you can do. I can’t imagine myself ever getting used to sending someone home knowing that no matter what you do you can’t save them.
My uncle is an oncologist, and despite his best efforts he loses patients to cancer from time to time. I never understood how he doesn’t get burned out by all of the suffering he sees until I visited the hospital where he works. The people there love him and consider him to be a hero. The patients he’s able to save make it all worthwhile.
It’s pretty common for health care workers to get overwhelmed at times. You ask yourself why the hell you chose such a profession. It’s the stories with the happy endings like Chris’s that remind us what it’s all about. It’s hard not to get angry and frustrated when many of the patients in the hospital are sick because of poor health habits. I wish more people could appreciate having their health. Just knowing that there are people like Chris that have the right attitude can only be a step in the right direction toward the wake up call that is needed.
Very Outstanding article.
Working in the medical profession throws in that perspective daily, yet I not only see patients that “can’t” work-out, but I see other physicians who are fat slobs or lazy. We have so much to be thankful for, but most forget to be thankful for HEALTH. Before medical school, I did a summer of research on pediatric leukemia at Egleston Hospital and Emory University. I came home depressed everyday. Those kids were freaking amazing. Now I have 3 of my own and am so thankful we are a healthy family, yet I still come in contact with child abuse at work. And everyday I see people who like being unhappy, they thrive on it-they don’t want to be healthy, they “can’t” work-out because they ar so busy. Screw them. I recently saw a 2 and a half year-old girl who had a transected spinal cord and fractur-dislocation of her 12th thoracic vertebrae from child abuse. Lately I think of her every time I work out, and every time I see my kids running around. Most of my patients can work-out, and are encouraged to do so, but when they say “can’t”, they must really mean “won’t”. Obesity is a problem in america, but the underlying problem is laziness, and it starts early and with play-sataion.
Whoa. Sorry, I got a little carried away there, and jumped from topic to topic. But, seriously, whatever happened to riding your bike, playing football and baseball in a random field, and runnign through the woods, or building forts. I got to play video games maybe once a week for an hour. Some of these kids today paly several hours everyday.
Whoops, I was starting up again. Must leave computer for a while. Must go…run!
Humanator, that stuff went away when the parents started to work 6 jobs so they could have 4 new suv’s.
And it also wasn’t helped when the parents tried to live through their kids by putting them in 16 sports camps by the age of 5 and making sure they became experts at scheduling as many activities as possible.
The last knife in the coffin was when people became too “PC” and removed any and all natural child playing activities at school because it’s mean to actually have winners and losers in games, and people dont want to be picked last, and 10 year olds are supposed to sit in school all day long and not get exercise. I mean adults get to sit in cubicles all day, why not teach kids how to do it also?
I will say my kids favorite activities tend to be natural ones, ones they make themselves. Son loves to ride his bike in the yard, making jumps with scrap boards. Course playing with couch cushions is fun, so is jumping off chairs/end tables too.
Truly moving piece Chris. The emotions jumped off the page.
I think that, for most of us, it’s very easy to get caught up in a self-centered perspective. I’m glad to have something like this article to pull my focus back out to the big picture, rather than being forced to go through what you did.
A few years back, I had a scare regarding my brother – he was a victim of a carjacking, and the perpetrators went on to commit some truly brutal murders afterward, even though my brother emerged with a few bumps and bruises. I’m glad I didn’t have to lose him to realize how important he is to me.
Here’s to hoping that your little girl gets to celebrate many more happy birthdays with your family, and also here’s to being thankful you gained such a wise perspective from a “mere” scare.
WOW. Excellent article. Every few months I find myself caught up in the whole “I’m not strong enough” or “if I could only afford one more botttle of XXX” bit. All it takes is an article like this to put things in perspective. WOW.
Thanks everyone! It’s good for me to re-read that one from time to time. Perspective is good to have, but it’s easy to lose too.
Ashlyn turns five this month, is in her third year of gymnastics and is about to get her yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do. She’s still susceptible to fevers, but only normal level fevers. No more 108 degree scares!
Never get a dad started posting pics of his girl. He may not stop.
Wow! Great article Chris.
I’m pretty new to the site and really get a lot out of your training articles but, this really hit home. I have 2 girls (age 9-1/2 and 8. I don’t know what I would do if I was put in that type of situation. Thanks for making me think. Perspective is a great tool, we just need to be reminded od how to use it from time to time.
Looks like she’s a sweetheart.
Awesome article.
Awwwww. Cutie. But I hope she eventually switches to brazilian ju-jitsu so she can put the smackdown on young punks! 
Yeah Chris, you had better take Arcane’s suggestions. She’s going to be fighting them off. Course just have her bring her dates to the house 