Deer In Headlines II
By Gery Deer
It’s been said, probably so often as to be cliche, that life is a journey. In my opinion, it’s one with no map and very little direction. Almost from the moment we’re born, when other human beings are making decisions for us, our path is dictated by a series of directional cues. We are constantly confronted with forks in the road, a seemingly endless succession of them. We encounter one after another, each outcome depending on whether we turn left, right, or stay the course.
With every decision comes an alternate reality, like you’re in a plot-your-own adventure story or the biological component of some if-then-else loop in a logic program. How you proceed is determined by the results of the choices you’ve made. Too bad there isn’t some kind of warning when we go the wrong way, like that irritating buzzer when you touch the sides in a game of Operation. I never could get the funny bone out!
Sometimes figuring out how to make those choices can be pretty fuzzy. That’s especially true when your life is filled with obstacles almost from the moment you leave your mother’s womb. That’s how it was for me.
I rarely discuss this, but I was born with a long list of birth defects, ranging from hip and pelvic issues to major organ complications. I no sooner hit the air than I was suddenly popped into an isolation crib and studied like a bug in a jar, it even had air holes in it!
When those forks in the road have “No Outlet” signs on pretty much every option, your previously endless choices are quickly reduced to none. My parents were faced with exactly that situation. They were told from the beginning to be prepared for a long fight. Every decision determined the path of my treatment, some successful, some not so much. Everything about my situation was new, experimental, and risky.
I remember my Dad telling me a story about the doctor coming out to see him after I had been moved to a children’s hospital and examined more thoroughly. At the onset, the prognosis was uncertain, to say the least.
Dad was sitting alone in the waiting room and my mother was still at the hospital across town where I’d been born. Although the overall birth was routine, given my issues, they wanted to keep her there longer. So there he was, my Dad, a strong, hard-working man who hadn’t made a decision without my mother since he was 18 years old, now alone, scared, and exhausted.
The doctor appeared from the exam area and sat down next to my father to explain the situation as clearly and thoroughly as he could. All estimates were that I wouldn’t walk, I would have lifelong physical and possibly mental debilitation, and, because of the likelihood of infection and limited treatment options, they shouldn’t expect me to survive beyond the age of 5.
Visibly shaken, Dad must have looked like his world was caving in around him. The doctor put a hand on his shoulder and said, plainly, “How much faith do you have?” My father’s response was true to his character – “How much do I need?” Put more simply, what Dad said was, “Let’s do this!”
That was the path Dad and Mom chose, the road they headed down. For them, there was no other choice and they didn’t go tentatively but with the gas pedal on the floor and in high gear. As predicted, it was a long fight, and there were countless surgeries and procedures into my twenties, one experiment after another. But, as you can see, I made it past age 5, by a half-century, actually.
And I’m here and able to share this story because my parents made choices in extraordinary circumstances of a kind I can’t even fathom but for which I will be forever grateful. Before my parents died, I had to make very similar kinds of life-changing decisions for their care as they had made for me. The moral of all of this story is that your journey isn’t complete and the only one who can really choose the correct path for you is you!
The Jamestown Comet 