It’s easy to miss the miracles and blessings. Don’t.
I was chatting with a friend earlier today about my recovery from my appendectomy, and they said, “Imagine how bad it would be without modern medicine.” I chuckled painfully and replied, “Without modern medicine I’d be dead. Twice over. Once ten years ago when my gall bladder would’ve ruptured, killing me horribly, and again this week.” Wild to think about.
I try to remember that whenever I catch myself thinking romantically about previous eras of human history. There was much of value to be experienced in life in antiquity, but a lot of it just sucked.
Today appendicitis isn’t a big deal, but in the context of 99.9% of human history it was a death sentence. I had some close calls in my Army days, to be sure, but this is twice now that I’ve suffered what was a 100% fatal condition prior to 1900 and modern medicine saved my life. We really are blessed in so many ways, and I try to remember that as best I can.
Below is James Garfield, 20th President of the United States. Shot in the back by Charles Guiteau, his wound was almost certainly not fatal, but his doctors repeatedly probed the wound with unsterilized tools and fingers. The President’s physician was obsessed with finding the bullet, and convinced that it had traveled from the right side entry wound to the left side of his abdomen, where doctors probed repeatedly contaminating Garfield’s abdomen with fatal bacteria.
Alexander Graham Bell even invented a metal detector to find the bullet, and it actually worked. Unfortunately, Garfield’s doctor only allowed Bell to scan the left side of Garfield’s abdomen where he was obsessively convinced the bullet was.
Why do I tell this story? Because while we often think of wealth as relative to our peers, standard of living is relative to history, and anyone who would trade places with the richest or most powerful man on earth 100-150 years ago would be terribly foolish to do so.
Just something to ponder today.
Amplified Being 