Health, well-being and Thankfulness

It’s been an interesting five weeks for me.

Firstly, my 15 year old son flying out from our home state with his Year 9 school class group for a week at Canberra.

He got to visit the old and new parliament houses, other national monuments and places of interest.

Secondly, illness became the “family occupation”! In the middle of his time away, he started with a sore throat and caught what was already racing through the students, a bad flu. When they all flew back in they were so tired and sick. My son stayed home the following week and had gotten over things, when the school rang to say one of the students had been confirmed positive with the swine flu. It was decided to keep my son home an extra day and go to school the following week.

He woke in the early hours of the Monday, of the following week I referred to above, very distraught and in a lot of pain with a very severe headache. It was starting all over again for him.
In the mean time my daughter was ready to walk off to the school bus, when she told me she had a headache and sore throat. I just said, “You’re going to bed.” Both of them had severe fevers, very hot and nasty dreams. My son ended up with antibiotics as he had tonsillitis.

All of this caused them both to miss the last week of school, of term 2. Now we have just completed two weeks school holidays.

Yesterday they were so glad to be getting back to school!!

That then leads me on to mention my niece. She was about 9 months old when she had complete kidney failure. She then went on a dialysis machine and had to grow and be of a certain weight before she could have a kidney transplant. She was about two when she got a kidney from her own dad. It was a successful transplant, but then later developed cancer in her kidney’s, which had been left in place. This required their removal and followed on with chemotherapy. This was all a very hard and stressful time on the family, with much separation from each other.

She is 12 years old now and doing amazingly well. I call her “Twinkle Toes”. She is small and slight in build and runs like the wind. She has a brilliant, intelligent mind and already advanced a year in her schooling.

However, with the possibly of the swine flu around our community, she is at “high risk”, as she is immune-suppressant. So the family have had to isolate themselves from school at the end term 2, right through the holidays, even from other friends, family and attending church. It’s been a tough time.

It makes me think of that film some years ago “The Boy in the Plastic Bubble”. The film was based on the life of David Vetter.

We don’t realize what other families live through and how much we take our own health for granted.

INTERESTING FACT: We are God’s wonderful creation. Did you know that nearly every organ in our body has more than one primary function? Kidney’s also are important in relation to blood pressure and the production of growth hormones.

I’ve mentioned all of this so that we can:

Be thankful as the sun came up over the horizon and
gave light, for another day.
Be thankful for the air you have to breathe, for another breath.
Be thankful for God’s keeping power of another heart-beat, for life.