As a quick prelude to the following blog post, I provided the above link for those interested. This past Monday my father accompanied me to our local high school football field where I completed my throwing session with a college teammate. Armed with my sister's digital camera, he took a clip of me throwing from three different angles for about two minutes. I uploaded the video to YouTube as a reference for both those who have been following along with me here on this blog and for my viewing as well. The video of me throwing shows that the recovery is largely a heavy work in progress, and yet it is a visual chronicle that enables me to truly get a gauge of how far I've come. Five months ago I sat on the couch in my parent's house...gulping down Vicodin pills and struggling to make a fist. A few days ago I crow-hopped into 75 throws 90 feet away from my friend, with no pain or discomfort whatsoever. Modern medicine, specifically orthopedics, is truly a miracle.
I sat here a few hours ago fiddling around on the Internet and began skimming through my past blog posts. I re-read the complaints I had in July directly after surgery, and I re-read the frustrations I felt with the "bionic arm" in August. I re-read about the first time I lifted a weight, the first time I had a setback, the first time I threw a baseball. I traced my steps all the way to the video above, and spent a good amount of that time in a deep state of reflection. I am incredibly satisfied with my progress up to this point and will continue to work hard towards continued progress into the future. However during that time of reflection, I came across something that hit me very hard.
My next door neighbors at home have had a very tough time since 2005. It was then that they lost their daughter, who was the victim of a brutal attack in her off-campus apartment as a sophomore in college. Recovering from the loss of a child is something that is unimaginably difficult and an experience that I don't wish anyone to ever have to deal with. As their lives continued on, the healing process grew stronger. A charity was founded under their daughter's name and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for off-campus safety awareness. Their older daughter has since been married and is due to have her first child in the next month. Then suddenly, their lives have been thrown upside down once again.
Last week the husband/father of the family was diagnosed with liver cancer. He would need a transplant in order to ensure the possibility of a full recovery.
After all of the heart-wrenching turmoil that the family has gone through in the last few years, the fear of death was back upon them. Cancer is an ominous and frightening word, and the fact that the tumor was eating away at his liver was not taken lightly in everyone's minds.
Last month while sharing a meal, the man shared with me news of his future: his sister would donate half of her liver to him in a transplant operation at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. It was a blessing that his sister was found to be a match and it was a blessing that she would be so courageous as to volunteer to help her brother in his fight to beat cancer. Such an event is so life-changing- both literally and figuratively- that it is truly inspiring to witness.
Two hours ago I received word that both my next door neighbor and his sister were in recovery after a successful liver transplant. They are currently resting comfortably in their hospital rooms at Columbia-Presbyterian and we are all very hopeful that the cancer has subsided and completely gone away.
Learning about experiences like these are everyday life and are events that, despite recognition of their disastrous nature, go relatively unnoticed because of the lack of personal connection that most people have with these circumstances. However, when something like the death of a loved one or the looming of a tumor within an individual that is close occurs, these particular occurrences can literally alter the way a person views life.
The sequence of development that has been established within this family's life has affected me in ways that are unimaginable. During my period of reflection earlier today when I continued to read through my own trials and tribulations of recovering from Tommy John a thought ran through my head...should I REALLY be keeping a blog talking about this? There are people that are very close to me in my life that are dealing with situations of much more severity and much greater longstanding ramifications than what I am going through right now. Should I really be keeping a log of my thoughts in a public manner such as a blog?
Simply put, am I whining over something that has turned into one whole giant exaggeration?
When I step out onto that field tomorrow to continue with my throwing program and step to release that first throw I will no longer be thinking about my mechanics or the fear of pain in my elbow. I will no longer be cognizant of my soreness or groan about my lack of patience with my progression. Tomorrow morning I will think of one thing and one thing only: my neighbor, Mark, resting comfortably in his hospital room with a new liver.
Modern medicine truly is a miracle...not just orthopedics. I am thankful that I am physically capable to do all the things that I am currently able to do because I fully recognize that there are many individuals in the world that are much less fortunate to have these opportunities. And my work ethic and the progress that I make will consist of having those individuals in the back of my mind...realizing that I am blessed to be doing what I am doing.
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