For those who don’t know, December is my birthday month. December 7th, I celebrate turning a year older, a year wiser and a year more thankful. Most people know me to sometimes be a little controversial, some say my blog posts come across as bitter, hell I’ve even been called a bully because I call people out on their bull. The reality is that I’m so appreciative of life that I hate when people don’t really respect it. Poisoning bodies with cigarettes or killing our liver, being reckless or stupid, not appreciating the smallest things in life… it’s really crazy how people use this short thing we call life. So in that respect I am bitter. I think people only truly learn to appreciate everything in life when they realize how fragile life is.
But, this isn’t really meant to be a ‘shame on you’ blog post… it’s meant to be a celebration of life. Here’s why…
I was born on December 7th. I was a seemingly healthy 8lb baby boy ready to take on the world. Or so everyone thought… my body did not. I was born with an extralobar pulmonary sequestration, in normal terms, I had additional lung tissues that was growing inside of me. It caused me to have hyperactive breathing(tachypneic) and made me turn blue (cyanotic) and faint a lot. To get an idea of what this was like, breath in and out as fast as you can for 20 seconds and notice how quickly your body reacts. At 3 days old, I was sent to Sick Kids Hospital. To save my life, open chest surgery had to be performed. This was going to be a tough time because the amount of lung tissue they had to extract was large, and with such a small patient and the fragility of the tissues it was near (my condition made medical history). I can’t even imagine how my parents must have felt… here was their first kid and one of the first pictures of me…
Fortunately, the operation was a success and I am still here today. But the reality is, it’s quite possible I might not have been. I’m reminded every day of this because I have a scar that runs 40% around my body. From the middle right side of my chest, all the way around to my spine.
Every year around this time I make a donation to Sick Kids Hospital. But this time around, I realize I have a bit of a popular forum with this blog… so maybe I can do a little more than my donation.
So this time around, if you want to make a donation directly to Sick Kids, you can do so here.
Alternatively, I’m going to be accepting donations through Paypal which will then be donated to Sick Kids in one lump sum. Every dollar counts! Anyone who wants to go this route, let me know and I will tweet any message to my followers as a thank you to you! It’s the least I can do to recognize you for your generosity.
I will collect from now until December 25th and provide a daily update on the total donated.
Oh.. here’s the medical journal entry! (Thank you mom for saving and scanning these for me.)
