Everything is always fair

Yesterday the wife and I spent the day visiting friends and family in DC. Firstly we visited an old squadmate of my wife's who is now in the hospital (Walter Reed) after a particularly bad explosion destroyed his vehicle in Iraq. He was in pretty rough shape but recovering and obviously in very good spirits - all things considered. This is to say he wasn't too happy, but retained his sense of humor and was keeping a positive outlook despite the fact that he may yet lose a leg and will never walk normally again even if he doesn't. He's a huge guy - any lesser of a man (I simply mean anyone of normal physical stature) probably would have been killed on the spot. So I guess he's lucky - or so everyone says. He had nine days left on what was his second one-year tour. We'll continue to visit him whenever we can.

Next we visited my cousin the doctor in her new house. She's got a two-year old son who got really sick a week before Christmas. At first it looked like the flu but then he couldn't shake a fever and when they took him to the hospital they discovered he was uniquely susceptible to a bacteria?/virus? that destroyed his pancreas' ability to create insulin. So all at once a perfectly healthy little boy became a Type I diabetic. They *again* were lucky they caught it in time - he could have died. Now he's still a normal little boy who lets me play with his train set and likes to read me stories (with my help.) He's understandably fussy about testing and shots but for the most part takes it all in stride. He's still too young to understand - right now it's a lot harder on his parents.

But everyone keeps adapting, and there's always these tiny little miracles wrapped up in these huge tragedies - that as far as I'm concerned don't make up for any of it - but still manage to bring friends and family together and keep us all focused on what's important. It scares me to think that maybe without all this horrible unfairness surrounding us in life and death we'd probably all default to being the enormously self-centered asses we all wish we could be - if we could just have things our way.