“After all, computers crash, people die, relationships fall apart, the best we can do is breathe and reboot. And when that fails there is always tape backup :-)”

Said in the true spirit of a database administrator(even if an intern) the above quote by my friend and collegue Tyson started me thinking if the best we can do is only breathe and reboot. I know that this sounds rhetorical and cynical, a character hard to pin on me by those that know me. But once in a while you have to face and answer such question. This is not one of those multiple choice standardized questions that have a single or set of answers! ’cause I believe that there are as many answers as there are humans on this earth. Each one has a different outlook and opinion on how life is and should be.

Being that I use this forum to answer my own questions I have decided to take a dig at it. The first and probably the only time that I have given this question my fullest and deepest attention was when I was on a hospital bed, given a few months to live. I guess this as good a time as any to refresh my memory. To understand this we need to go back in time … 3589 days to be exact …

I had just finished my English II exam in 9 Standard(grade) and was playing hand tennis on my school’s basketball court, when all of a sudden without any warning whatsoever the bone in my upper arm broke into pieces(I came to know about it later). I had just thrown the tennis ball when I heard a snap and saw my hand fall to my side with the ball going nowhere. I was fortunate enough to have one of my friends drop me home, since it was one of those days that I was supposed to take the bus home. Nobody including me had an inkling about the extent of the damage, since I had no pain and there was no swelling. Everybody just assumed that it was just a dislocation of my arm from the shoulder, ’cause of which I had to wait for my dad to get home in the evening to take me to the doctor and that’s when the fun started. I had never had a fracture before this in my life and people I met told me how painful it was if there was dislocation. I was hoping and earnestly praying that it should be a fracture and not a dislocation.

apparently I had been diagnosed with bone cancer and that too in its most advanced stage. The specialist who performed a biopsy operation on me the same night, showed my parents the state of affairs that my bones were in … it was dark and as brittle as a egg shell. The worst case scenario was that I had from 1 to 6 months to live. Through all this commotion, I was kept in the dark. My parent’s rationale was that it would scare me, what they didn’t understand was that I wasn’t at a stage where I would worry too much about some hocus pocus cancer (Sometimes think that I am at that same maturity level), I wasn’t complaining since I was being treated like a king and was being visited by people from near and far. Though I do know that there was lot more prayer at home (not there was any lack of it before) and I did get my Nintendo video game(something my dad had been resisting for a few years). This was a also the first time I came in touch with Dhinakaran uncle who prayed and comforted my parents that the cancer had been healed.

After a tense week, the biopsy report came back as negative. The only hitch was the experts wouldn’t believe it, especially the doc who had performed the biopsy operation on me. So it was back to more testing and all the results came back as negative (though none explaining how my arm broke into pieces). There was only one doctor who would let us believe in divine healing. He also performed a bone transplant operation by grafting a piece of my Fibula and chips of my pelvic bones in order to replace the broken humerus. It wasn’t fun being cooped up on a bed for two months with no way to move, since my right arm was POPed to my body and my left leg and hip were also in bandages. I still hate the smell of the hospital. But I guess in all this I missed mentioning that I was healed miraculously.

If you had been through such an experience its hard to re-evaluate your life and your choices. I knew I had a second birth but not for myself but to use it for others. I can’t say I have succeeded it that endeavor, I probably have failed spectacularly though I am still trying. And what’s more I know that there is a purpose to myself just like everybody else’s. I just know that even if I impact one person by the time I die, the second chance would have been worth it.

I know this is a oft repeated quote

Give What You Can’t Keep to Gain What You Can’t Lose