You are a master of gratitude, actually !

I now keep a gratitude journal where i jot down ten things i give gratitude to God for in my life.

I am so glad you, your sweet daughter and the rest of your family are all getting better. In my experience as a parent, when our children are not well it takes us off our center and shifts our focus. For some us greatly, for others just enough to disturb our spirit and challenge our principles and vision.

I am glad that you worked at remaining centered, which is not easy to do, while supporting your family amidst a crisis. Its a testament to your self-development.

Living in NYC I know for a fact its a very germy, virus infested place. I learned how germy when my then 2 y.o. and I were riding in a subway car. We were seated near a window and as he bounced happily standing on my lap he leaned his forehead against the glass pane mesmerized by the scene outside. Suddenly I saw the look of disgust on my fellow passengers faces as they stared at my child that was licking the window, unbeknown to me, over my shoulder (iuck! is right). In a few days time my son fell violently ill much like your daughter. Even my own medical background could not help relieve my son of his symptoms or illness or help him improve.

As C.S. Lewis said, prayers helped in that it gave me the peace of mind and spirit to help me deal with it all. That peace of mind helped me work with his medical team in asking questions and offering suggestions to seek out answers and possible solutions. Then one day, several weeks into his illness, and after much prayer and medication, I pulled out my journal in order to purge some of my negative fears and thoughts by writing them out and doing battle with them on paper, I came across my previous entry, in which I detailed my son’s subway window washing with his tongue, with both humor and horror. Suddenly I remembered a science experiment I had done on a subway car many years before while in my high school biology class.

In that experiment we were supposed to grow bacterial cultures in petri dishes. The bacterial cultures were supposed to came from common surfaces we all touched. The aim was to get at least 10 different cultures we could identify. I chose to swab the surface of a metal hand strap and a pole from inside a subway car in different areas and then deposit the cultures in my 5 petri dishes. I hand the most outstanding results in the class. I had 35 cultures that I was able to identify and over 200 I could not.

The next morning I had a consult with my son’s pediatrician. During that consult I detailed the tongue cleaning event, my science experiment and my thoughts about a possible scenario in which my son’s immune system was not just battling one or two illnesses but instead a whole army of viral and bacteriological illnesses. A great deal of bloodwork later we discovered just that, he was fighting many different viruses not just one. Too many in fact to be treated with any one medicine as any one medicine would suppress aspects of his immune system leaving him vulnerable to the remaining one.

The only course of action was not to fight the diseases but to buildi up his immune system. As you and I have found, the only way to combat negativity is through positivity. To focus on what is positive, gives us gratitude and inspires us.

It was a slow recovery for him too back then. Over six months to be exact, but as a result his immune system is stronger, he is healthier than ever and now seldom gets sick. I know your daughter will come through with flying colors, look at who she has for a dad, an awesome inspirational individual. May she be well, stronger and better than ever sooner than you think!

All of you will remain in my prayers till then!