Bringing Life (and just one of its aspects) Into Perspective

Back when I first started blogging, I had MANY friends who were regular bloggers. Blogging was the fad of the time and many were dedicated to the challenge that the up-keep of a blog presented. Over the past year or so, many of those with whom's blogs I followed originally have deserting their blogs, or discontinued them all together. Still, some have continued, as well as some new bloggers have come along. For me, I have gone through spells. I still find myself often in thought during the day and thinking what a great blog entry I could make out of the thoughts in my head, but nowadays, more often then not, those thoughts never reach the keyboard. I've had times when I've thought about giving my blog up. I've had times when I've gone through posting droughts, but to this day I have continued to keep my blog going, even when I feel it is nothing like what I originally started it out being and some of the blogs I felt so happy with from "back in the day."

But something that keeps my blog going today is the connection I feel through it. It's funny because there really isn't any of my closest friends that read this blog, but what I do know is that there ARE people that read it. And honestly, if it weren't for my sitemeter that keeps track of how many people visit my blog, many of my readers I would probably never know about because most of my readers do not leave comments.

Now, while comments are great and all, I too know about the process of being a regular reader of a blog site, but never leaving comments. Sometimes we choose to not leave comments because we don't want others to know we are reading their blog and other times we are simply not inclined to leave any thoughts on the topic at hand; whatever the case, both are legitimate reasons in my opinion. But, on the author's end of things, I can say there's something special about just knowing people regularly stop into your blog. Now whether they actually read it or not, who knows....HA! But knowing that they make the effort to check for updates, gives a blog life. Not only that, but there's nothing quite like the feeling of seeing someone link your blog up to their own--that in itself is like getting the A+ grade hung up on the refridgerator! Not to mention when some of the people linking your blog on theirs are people you don't even know personally! HA! What a good feeling!

So why do I bring this all up today? Am I soliciting for comments? No. Am I soliciting for readers to make their selves known? No. Am I wanting my blog to be linked to more people's blogs? No.

I bring this up today, because of a connection I believe my blog has brought to me. It is a connection that has impacted my life for some time, but more heavily over the past week, and especially the past three days.

One of my readers happens to be someone that I went to undergraduate school with. This young lady (who actually is older than me, but we are both still young ladies) was a couple years ahead of me in school, but we got to know one another through our social club. I think it's fair to say that we never really got very close while in school together, even through our many social club activities together, and even though she was the mentoring officer over my pledge class the year I joined. After she graduated (and then I eventually did a couple years later), we really didn't see one another or keep in contact as time moved on.

Then sometime back (and honestly, I'm not sure when it was), I came to find out she had come across my blogsite from someone elses--or something like that, as we all know how we stumble across acquaintances websites accidently--and she had begun following my blog. At somepoint she ended up leaving a comment, which led me to knowing she was a reader, and I was able to get to her blogsite from there and since that time I think we've both been rather regular readers of one another's sites.

Now what always seems to amaze me about blogs is how though someone might not know someone personally (or even if you have met that author before, but maybe never really had been very close to the individual), you can seem to find a closeness to someone through his/her writings. There is a bond that can form when someone writes personal accounts or shares his/her thought processes with another via a written prose. It really does just make me smile thinking about it! It amuses me too because more often than not, I find myself thinking to myself, "why didn't I enrich my life with this individual before now?!" People are just so amazing and worth investing our time with!

So there I was, forming what seemed to be a new bond with this social club sister of mine. Via her blogsite, I seemed to follow her job processes; she talked about her dog; I learned about her recent marriage and her joy with her husband. It was as if I knew more about her now, without having even seen her or heard her voice, than I did those many months we had spent in the same rooms together in college.

So when her mother fell ill about a month ago and she began sharing with her blog readers about this stage of her life, I continued to read...

As the blog posts kept coming, her mother's status got more and more unpredictable. It started as she was going into the hospital on Oct. 15th with what was believed to be a complicated case of pneumonia (as she had been struggling with it for several weeks at that point). Rather quickly, in efforts to find out the placement of the fluid in her lungs in order to drain them, the doctors discovered she did not have fluid in the lungs after all (1). So then the docs decided it must have been that she had been exposed to some toxins for some period of time, so they needed to do a biopsy of a piece of the lung to try to figure out the toxicology status (2). Then a matter of a week later her mother gets diagnosed with "free air" in her abdomen, which resulted in having to have a portion of her colon removed (3), still no diagnosis for the lung situation at this time...

The morning of Saturday, Oct. 27th, a matter of 12 days after being admitted to the hospital with what was believed to be pneumonia, my friend's mother was given a diagnosis of pulmonary fibrosis and told she wouldn't have much longer to live. As the hours began to pass, her mother continued to go downhill, and by the evening hours of that same day the family was told she was not expected to make it through the night. Later that night she passed away (4).

Despite the length of this blog, I am ultimately speechless concerning this situation. I'm dumbfounded to think what it must be like to be in my friend's situation. There hasn't been a day pass since I got news of her situation Saturday morning that I haven't had the thought of my friend and the situation cross my mind several times throughout the day. It all just seems too unbelievable to me....

How does one go into the hospital with what is believed to be pneumonia and then pass away less than two weeks later from something else?! Sure, pneumonia can be deadly, but that's typically in elderly individuals who are not getting medical treatment for it [or maybe this is just my ignorant understandings of pneumonia]. So with this thought processing of mine, it just seems to "routine" in a way to think of someone going into the hospital with a pneumonia diagnosis. In no way would I have expected such a turn of events.

It's just so hard to think of what it must be like to be the family in a situation like this. My heart just aches for my friend and her husband, her brother, and her father. Of course, I can't imagine what all they are going through and dealing with based on this situation--as none of us can.

I guess this has really put this whole life thing into perspective. It truly is a state of being that can be taken from any of us in the most unexpectant of ways at anytime.

With a lack of words for what to say next, or even how to try to begin to bring comfort, I want to simply leave you with my friend's blogsite, and ask that you keep her and her family in your thoughts and prayers.