"Whenever anyone asks me, "How are you" or "how is it going" or anything similar, my answer is almost always, "I woke up. It's a good day." Let me explain why.Nine years ago in August of 2006, I ended up in Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, with a fairly aggressive infection in the soft tissues of my neck. Antibiotics weren't working, the infection kept spreading and began encroaching on my esophagus, so into surgery I went.
I awoke the next morning in intensive care with a tracheostomy and breathing through a ventilator which really surprised me. I expected to wake up and pretty much go home. I didn't get all the details until a few days later, but apparently while trying to establish an airway for surgery, my throat swelled shut. The oral surgeon operating on me was the only doctor available who was trained to perform an emergency tracheostomy.
Four days after surgery, one of my nurses came into my room at 3:00 in the morning, turned on the light and said, "Let me get this straight. You came into the hospital with a toothache and almost died?" I told him no, I didn't almost die, they just couldn't establish an airway. He said, "I just read your chart. You stopped breathing on that table. That trache you have in your throat is an emergency trache. Your doctor saved your life."
My life changed at that moment. I changed, too. Life is a gift. A precious, precious gift, and I didn't want to ever waste a minute of it on things that did not matter or add value to my life or the people I cared about. I learned that day that we don't know how long we have on this earth, so we need to ensure that we spend our time as wisely as possible and with the people we care the most about, and to make sure that our time spent with them is positive, happy and productive.
I still bear the scars in my neck from that experience. My surgeons said they could fix them, but I declined. I never want to forget how precious life is. So every day, when I wake up and look in the mirror and see those scars, I remember, and I try to have a good day.
Nine years ago, I almost didn't wake up. So when I open my eyes in the morning, it's already a good day. A wonderful day. A day to be with those that I love and care for the most in this world. Each day is a gift, and I'm grateful for every minute I get to spend with my wife, children and grand-children. I love them more than I am able to express. I have been given a second chance at life, and I don't plan to waste a bit of it.
I am about to go to bed. But if I am blessed to wake up in the morning, it will be the start of a good day."
-Michael Boring
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