Unexpected Blessings
This is not a typical blog post. Most often, as I sit down to my computer, I’m thinking about some piece of news, or a conversation I’ve had, or a question someone has sent me to help them navigate their care.
Instead, as I sit down at my computer on this Thanksgiving morning 2007, I’m so very grateful for the many blessings in my life. My own health, the health and happiness of my loved ones. Those are always at the top of the list.
What has changed in the past several years, though, is perhaps the one thing I am most grateful for. In 2004, when I was told I had cancer and would likely be dead within months, I could never have imagined what a gift that could be. A blessing because the doctors were wrong, of course. But an even bigger blessing was learning just why I was put on this earth. That’s a gift most of us never receive in an entire lifetime.
That gift has blossomed into a career — the opportunity to learn more about navigating American healthcare, and share my learnings with my readers and listeners. The opportunity to meet knowledgeable and helpful people including medical professionals, media professionals and most certainly my fellow advocates — those who work on behalf of all of us to make healthcare safer and fairer.
You’ve heard about the “attitude of gratitude” — well — that’s so very me. It’s very much about moving from blamer to fixer, and realizing that sometimes our biggest gifts in life are the people and events that cause us the most difficultly, then provide us with the most opportunity. They are truly unexpected blessings.
I wish you and yours a most blessed Thanksgiving today. And if you aren’t American, then I wish you the opportunity to consider your own blessings on any day you choose. Blessings know no geographic boundaries.
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