"Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you."

The above title is a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, which you will find next to my smiling face in my senior yearbook. I may not always act in accordance with the premise, but I strive to do this. Not only in being true to myself, but treating myself soundly so that I can be here for my family, my friends, my classmates, all of those for whom I care deeply and cherish. Anytime someone in my 6 degrees has a close encounter with grave illness and/or death, this self-care idea haunts me.

During our usual FaceTime, my mom asked me, "Did you get my message?" I replied no, chalking it up to the dearth of service in the ICC. "Dad was really sick on the plane home. They almost landed us in Jacksonville." She said this with a slight edge in her voice, but not with the histrionic character a non-physician (for example, oh, I don't know, me) would use. "What happened?! Ulcer complications?"

Sidenote: my dad had a duodenal ulcer diagnosed over Christmas break. I told him I expected him to comply with his dietary restrictions and medicinal regimen (no fatty, greasy foods that further irritate the duodenum) and that my mom would report to me. I received good reports.

Anyway, on with the story: "No, I think it was [vegal ventral something medical jargon I don't understand]. At first he said he was really nauseated, then he got all sweaty. I told the flight attendants I was a doctor and needed oxygen and Phenergan. They brought me both. Then I lost his pulse, and he was white as a sheet. His pulse came back, but since the plane was so loud, I had to rely on counting the needle movements of the blood pressure monitor. Fortunately the plane wasn't crowded, so he got to lie down across 2 seats. His color came back in about 20 minutes. The EMTs took an EKG at the gate, and everything seemed back to normal. Now he's napping."

I should also mention this has happened before, quite oddly, also on a plane. 1 time was freaky enough, but twice? Well, as an aspiring lawyer, I'm not one to believe in coincidences. Something is afoot. My mom is making him visit the cardiologist. Maybe it's altitude-based, maybe not. I'm really not the one to ask. The last time I wanted anything to do with cardiology was 6th grade.

What pulls at my humanities heartstrings is the frailty of human life. Granted, we withstand a lot of traumas: broken bones, broken hearts, replaced joints, crushed psyches. But at the same time, we are fragile creatures. A split-second difference in a car wreck can mean the difference between life and death. Planes crash too for that matter. So do our cardiovascular systems, our immune systems, any bodily system really, because of a minute genetic change or plaque blocking an artery thinner than a fingernail. One instant, one teensy phenomenon, and our entire lives are irrevocably changed, even ended. This alarms me greatly.

I know there isn't much we can do for many of these circumstances. Technically, we could die from falling out of bed, hiding from all the things we only think will kill us. Some people are more genetically blessed with better cholesterol, blood pressure, immunity from genetic mutations, etc. than others. If I avoided every possible thing that could lead to my demise, I would meet said demise much earlier due to starvation (because come on, how clean and healthy is your food REALLY?). In that case, all we can do, what we must do, is to live. Read: we should NOT take stupid risks that are more likely than not to cause death or severe harm. I could fill up a 3-subject notebook with examples. We can take reasonable precautions of various types, like not eating Steak & Shake's new pepperoni pizza steakburger and an extra large milkshake for every meal or not wearing a seatbelt. But these basics/extremes aside, the paralysis of fear is not what I want on my mind as I draw my last breaths. I hope you don't, either. So make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.