Appreciate What Life Has Given You

I think it’s so very amazing that all of us humans have a brain that takes so many things for granted–that is until we lose the very things we took for granted. One of the biggest for most of us is that thing we call “good health”. That sure hit me hard when I began having major pains in my stomach. They got worse by the week and then by the day and then, towards the end, the pain was increasing by the hour. I had scans done, an MRI, and 2 blood tests, but none of those tests found what was causing the pain.

Wow, did I ever start thinking about how I miss all those days, weeks, and years of good, or even great, health and, yes, most of those times I really didn’t even appreciate how good it all was. I just took my good health all for granted!

Finally, the doctors figured it out. My gallbladder was cram packed with cement hard stones. It was so full of stones that I couldn’t eat a single bite of food without great pain. The only thing I could handle was water. Because of that pain, I went more than a week without hardly eating a thing. The only good news was that I had no hunger pains or desire to eat and, yes, I lost 15 pounds. I guess you could call that the new “gallbladder diet”. Fortunately, my doctor was able to arrange his schedule for immediate surgery when the pain quickly got unbearable.

Since the surgery, I’ve felt better and better each day, and now I am so very grateful for not having a huge pain in my gut. Not a single day goes by that I don’t greatly appreciate my good and improving health. I’m bound and determined to NOT take good health for granted!  It is so easy to take so many things for granted. It certainly crossed my mind how we all seem to take for granted the huge progress that us humans have made in the field of medicine. I’m pretty sure that 100 or 150 years ago I would be dead by now.

The bottom line is that all of us need to be constantly aware of all that good things in our life and we should try to take time to appreciate all those good things. There is one simple thing that can help us not to take things for granted and that is to take time to “journal your journey” by writing down what you are doing and experiencing as well as your thoughts and then, from time to time, go back and read and appreciate what life has given you.