Laying here in this bed, eye wide open and can’t sleep. Like so many times before it is almost morning and no rest. The sun is coming up over the horizon, pretty soon they will come for me, maybe I should have ate something at midnight then they could not do anything to me. Oh well it will all be over soon anyway and then I will rest. I know they think they are doing it with the best of intentions but that does not help my thoughts.

             My palms are wet from sweat; my heart is racing as if it were in the Daytona 500 and trying to take the checkered flag. My head is throbbing and I feel every beat of my heart in the back of my head. I know, maybe they won’t do anything because of my head and my heart. No that won’t stop them, it never has they will do what they want to do anyway. Fear has gripped me yet again as I think of what is to take place. I just get so tired of all of this and just want things right again.

             Here they come; it is just before eight o’clock in the morning. That is strange though, usually they don’t start until late, they always make me wait and yet I hear them coming. Yep, there is the Nurse but wait why are the doctors coming? Maybe they are going to postpone the surgery; that would be great. Oh no! It’s not for me, I had not even thought about the patient lying in the bed next to me. I had been to busy thinking about my own troubles not someone else. This was my time to feel sorry for myself not another patient; I am the one suffering all this agony; not him.

             I sat up and listened as the doctors went to work on the man in the next bed. He screamed in pain and my heart skipped a beat or two. What in the world are they doing to him I wondered. More screams, over and over. I heard the Nurse say, it will be over soon Mr. Hunkle, the stitches will be out soon. I knew at that point that he must have had surgery before I had been admitted. I began to feel the pain every time the Doctor removed a stitch, here I was feeling someone else’s pain and I could not understand that.

It was all over and the Doctors left the room. The Nurse pulled the curtain back and left.

             Once every one had gone, I turned to look at the man and to my surprise he was only about 19 year old. I asked him what they had done, he replied with the most gruesome story I have ever heard. Tom told me he had been playing with some friends and as he jumped over a fence he landed on a big spike that was in a board. The spike went right through his scrotum and up through his testicles. Tom’s privates had been ripped wide open and it took over a hundred and some stitches to close the wounds.

              As for myself I had had about twenty five or thirty surgeries prior to this one and feeling pity for myself.

  I was only fourteen or fifteen at the time but right then and there, I had a change of heart. I began to think about another human being who happened to be worse off than I was. I never forgot the lesson I learned that day. A person can always look over their shoulder and see someone who is in far worse condition. My feeling sorry for myself ended that day. Do I still get scared when it comes to having surgery? Yes by all means it is still the same way. The sweaty palms, the racing heart and the pounding of my head but I look at it differently than I did back then.

             To this day I have had over sixty operations on my eye where they have tried to reconstruct an eye socket so I could have an artificial eye. You see I lost my eye when I was eight years old and the socket ended up very deformed. I don’t worry about the deformity anymore and it does not bother me if anyone notices. God made me the way I am and he also showed me the truth about life. So remember these words.

             Look over your shoulder when you are in a self pity situation and I guarantee you will see someone who is far worse than you are.