Perspective Is Everything

Some friends of ours have a daughter who is battling cancer. She receives her treatments, her scans, her chemo in a hospital near where I live. I don't think that little K is even three years old. When she first came down to the area to start treatment, just looking at her broke your heart. She was terribly skinny, barely eating, in pain and fussy. Now, however, after being on a feeding tube and responding to different treatments, etc., she's gained weight and is an utter delight---smiling, grinning, being silly.

Yesterday I went to spend part of the day at the hospital with her to give her mom and grandma a break. We had a good time, K and I. We went to the day room where the little kids can play. K is smart and funny and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. She does what every other 2-yr-old does, despite the tubes coming from various parts of her body, despite the metal tree to which all the tubes connect that we pulled along beside us everywhere we went.

Perhaps the most poignant moment, though, came when we were playing on her hospital bed. We'd been having some fun with her stuffed animals when she took one of them and told it to throw up into this little tube-like container. "Throw up," she matter-of-factly commanded. "Again." My heart just seized up inside my chest at the stark evidence of what her reality is. Her life is defined---and has been for as long as she can remember---by doctors and beeps and medicine and pain. It was so wrong somehow for that to be part of her play, and yet it's a very real part of her life. And for children, doesn't so much of play just imitate real life?

Her unquenchable spirit makes her precious to me. The reminder that the richness of life is all about our perspective is a lesson I want not to forget.