Life is short, eat dessert first!

My family can sometimes be a bit unusual. We camped out in front of Target to get a Wii, we dash off to Disney World every chance we get, if the ice cream truck comes by before dinner then we get ice cream for dinner and "real" food for dessert. Now we're spending our time making websites, buttons, business cards and writing letters to try to save the Club we love even though our chance of success is small.

We plan for the future and don't just live for today, but we certainly aren't living only for the future. It strikes some people as weird, and I can't count the number of times that people express shock that we always go to midnight book or movie releases, go to every concert we can manage and spend half our free time playing video games. They ask why we do all that - I think they feel we should just grow up already - and I tell them it's just what we enjoy. Truthfully, though, there is a better reason than that.

When I was still in college I came home after giving a bunch of calves their vaccinations and I noticed that my arm felt a little odd. It was slightly red as I stepped into the shower but I wasn't concerned; I figured something at the farm had irritated my skin and it would be fine once I washed it off. I was a little more alarmed by the time I stepped out of the shower - my arm looked like I was wearing a bright red opera glove. Plus, now my fingers were going numb. The rest of the evening passed in a blur. . . I remember going to two doctors offices and our scary local hospital before the frantic drive to a better hospital in Nashville. We made that trip in record time.

As it turns out, I had a blood clot in my arm. Apparently that was just unheard of in someone my age, especially since I wasn't in any of the risk groups.

I was 19 at this point and the doctors involved in my case should have talked to me, but they wouldn't. I looked about 12 at the time, and my parents were there, so everyone sort of ignored me and I didn't really know what was going on. I spent a week in a Nashville hospital. The youngest person on my floor other than me was in his 70s and my doctor was planning to write a paper about me. I was scared and annoyed that no one would tell me what was going on, but I heard enough to get the general idea. They mentioned amputation, they mentioned I might have a stroke, they said I might die. They did tons of tests. My best friend drove 3 hours to visit me every day and kept me sane, but I lay awake every night wondering if I would die or lose my arm. (My boyfriend at the time also visited me once. He was planning to be a missionary and decided that my health crisis was a sign from God - he couldn't marry someone who was too sick to travel all over the world with him, he told me, so he broke up with me.)

And then.

Then, one morning, She came breezing into the room. The Nurse from Hell. She apparently was still in school, and shouldn't have been allowed around patients alone, but there she was. I had just finally dozed off when she came in and opened the window and cheerily announced that it was time to start preparing for my surgery. Um, what surgery?! No one had told me I anything about it, and I told her she must be in the wrong room. She was sure she wasn't and I was almost hysterical since the only surgery that had been mentioned as a possibility was amputating my arm.

She was in the wrong room, thank goodness.

You might think they'd have kept her away from me after that, but no. She came in the next day when they brought me lunch. I was finally off the worst of the meds I'd been on, the one that made everything smell like a skunk to me, and so I could actually smell the food. I said something about the pie smelling good just before she walked out of the room and she stopped and just looked at me for a second. Then she glanced at my chart and IV and my arm, shuffled her feet a little, and said "Yeah, that pie is good. You should eat it first. After all, life is short and you never know . . . well, just eat the dessert first."

And then she left.

I truly believed I was going to die.

Actually, I was released from the hospital the next day. I spent the next year on unpleasant medication, getting blood tests constantly, but I was okay. They decided that my blood clot was a freak thing caused by practicing flute for hours at a time with my arm in a weird position. These days there are very few reminders that any of that ever happened.

I hated that nurse, and I hope that she never worked with another patient again. But I did learn something from her. (Cue the South Park "I Learned Something Today" music) Life is short. Sometimes tomorrow doesn't come. It's important to make the most of the time you have. Sometimes that means eating ice cream for dinner, and sometimes it means running off to Disney World "just because". Sometimes it means fighting to save a place you love even though the likelihood of success is small. I never want to look back and regret the things I didn't do or the chance I didn't take, because life is short. Sometimes you don't get another chance later to do something. Eat dessert first.