This month I was going to defer to the tried and true and ask about a historical figure you'd like to have dinner with, but...I'll save that for a future SIWK.
So, I wanna know: Have you ever had your life flash before your eyes? What were the circumstances? Who was with you? Are you different as a result of the experience? Can you describe it?
Hmmm. I guess I had my heart in my throat (not a very medical description, there) when I almost or partially fell down a long flight of stairs, but didn't quite have my life flashing before my eyes. But afterwards, when the tachycardia subsided, I did think about what a close call it was and how grateful I am to still be here for my kids.
ReplyDeleteI remember when my dad and I had a crash when we we were sledding together back when I was a kid, and it was as if I saw "my life without him" flash before my eyes. He told me to run to the car and get mom. I was one scared little girl, but then he turned out to be just fine. It was at least a decade later that he died of cancer (unrelated to sledding, as far as I can tell) so I nonetheless have a lot to reflect on. That probably doesn't answer your question, though. How about you? Let's hear your story...
My life-flashing-before-my-eyes experience wasn't a near death experience, more of a processing event...
ReplyDeleteIn the last few weeks of pregnancy with my son (my first) it dawned on me that in just days I, for the first time, would no longer but child-free. Instead from that point forward I would be a mother. So long as all goes well I will have a child straggling behind me for the next 18 or more years. It was a step I couldn't go backwards on, I was forced to go forward.
I did the same thing when I got married. There's the pre-married self and the pre-mother self, among other pre-selfs, and for me they were huge and it involved "mourning" the end of one self, which just so happened to involuntarily involve the flashing of my life before my eyes.
Hope that makes sense.
At 8 months of pregnancy with my first (12 years ago!), I fell down the back steps into our garage. I was alone except for our loyal golden retriever - husband had to work late that night. While, I didn't have a "movie before my eyes" moment, the incident awakened a new protectiveness in me - for my baby & for myself. I think it was the Universe's way of saying "Slow down, take it easy, it's not just you anymore." Like you, Ginni, it took the majority of my pregnancy to realize the momentous change on the horizon. The lesson about caring for my child stuck pretty well - I'm very conscience of being present for my children. The lesson about slowing down for myself - no so much - have to have constant reminders like a bout of pneumonia to jiggle me into self-TLC.
ReplyDeleteI was sent to a cardiologist because my primary care doctor saw something on an ecg that she thought was suspicious. I was expecting to be told that he thought I might have WPW. My son had gone through an ablation procedure for that the year before. When he came into the room he very seriously told me "I'm sorry, your ecg shows that you have Long QT Syndrome." As he told me about the syndrome all the times that I had fainted and dismissed it because I had been ill, or hot or startled passed before my eyes. It took months to get past the emotion of knowing that I could have died any one of those times. Finally I came to the conclusion that I hadn't died and really nothing had changed, except that now I was being treated for it.
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