I was hospitalized for 8 weeks undergoing intervenous antibiotic therapy. There were complications which had threatened my life very seriously on a number of occasions. I was allergic to the medication, and there were 8 different kinds of specialists who cared for me and pulled me through.
When you face mortality you begin to realize what kind of things really matter in your life. Flowers that sway in the breeze become something that you can marvel at. Old people become much more important. Smiles come easier. Life is simply amazing...all life.
I was walking through a store one day and a strange man came up and asked me what had happened that made me beam such happiness. Apparently I was smiling...just because. BTW...while I was still in ICU my dad sat on the floor in the room and waited for some sort of good news. I remember waking up because my nose was itching like crazy! I kept complaining about it and my dad shot up off the floor and said, "thank God! You can feel it!!!" :) I continued to recover enough feeling so that no one would ever notice that I had had a stroke, although it took several months. One day I was carrying my baby in my left arm and (duh) didn't realize I had her! LOL... And I could never trust that side to test bottles, etc...hot sometimes felt cold, etc.
The point is that sometimes it takes loss to recognize all of those things that we had always taken for granted. Loss gives us an opportunity to make gains. Loss is what we make of it. ":)