Finding Jesus? My Re-Birth Day

Last week, I posted on Facebook that the hubby and I were going out, as we do every year on the Monday after Thanksgiving, to celebrate my “Re-Birth Day.” Later, we saw friend in the village who asked if we were celebrating the day I “found Jesus” and was “reborn” the religious way. Um….. No!…. Hell NO! But I found it pretty funny considering my extreme aversion to religion, and after I stopped laughing I explained the story. So I thought today I’d share with you what my “Re-Birth Day” is all about.

In 2009, on the Monday after Thanksgiving, I suffered a massive hemorrhage of a blood vessel in my brain. The medical term is a “ruptured aneurysm.” It causes physical and mental impairments similar to a stroke, and often death, because the blood in the cranium kills brain cells. The bleeding was so extensive the doctors didn’t know if I would live through the night. Luckily they stabilized me, and the neurosurgeons were able to repair the blown-out vessel using small titanium coils and a stent. Amazingly, when they pulled me out of the drug-induced coma five days later, I was functioning! And I wanted my Blackberry so I could get back on Facebook- STAT!

Fortunately for me, I recovered fully within a few months and that is part of why we celebrate the event as my “Re-Birth Day” every year. Some of our friends say they wouldn’t want to be reminded of such a painful life-threatening event. But the other part of why we celebrate is because it was the beginning of some wonderful changes in our life. Surviving it was the catalyst to our seeking out a way to live a different life, a life we’d only dreamed about previously.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying being left with a permanent hole the size of a pinky finger in my head, which dear hubby calls my whale hole, was wonderful. It wasn’t. The pain was unbearable, like having a sharp axe buried in my head for months. And four years later I still feel out of balance on stairs. And at least a quarter of my memory seems to be wiped out. And I have scars that make my hair grow funny. And even a normal headache scares me to death. My party-girl life is over because enduring a hangover is unthinkable. But we still choose to celebrate because I DID get to live again, and we realize we could have had a very different ending to our story. We celebrate because we have decided to make it a priority to do whatever WE WANT with whatever time we have left. We're still alive to celebrate, not everyone is so fortunate.

So for us, celebrating my Re-Birth Day is a symbol of more than just surviving, it’s a celebration of the start of living our life the way we dreamed. It’s the day we say thank you, precious ruptured aneurysm, for giving us the opportunity to celebrate living instead of mourning dying, and start realizing our dreams. Without the valuable lesson that tiny but deadly hemorrhaged blood vessel taught us, we wouldn’t be living the life we always wished for, but never thought we could have. We wouldn’t be here in Placencia. And right now, here is exactly where we want to be. So Happy Re-Birth Day to me - I wish the same for you. Minus the aneurysm, of course!