{"id":6328,"date":"2015-12-31T19:06:45","date_gmt":"2016-01-01T00:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=6328"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:50:07","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:50:07","slug":"accomplished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=6328","title":{"rendered":"Accomplished"},"content":{"rendered":"

My biggest accomplishment of 2015 is that I survived it.<\/em><\/p>\n

I like the sound of that – it has the right mix of crispness and surprise.<\/p>\n

But … nah.<\/p>\n

“Privileged white girl! What do you know about survival?” my inner critic hisses.<\/p>\n

The people who should be allowed to take credit for surviving 2015 are refugees, soldiers, people injured in terrorist attacks, people living in famine-stricken countries. They really had to fight to survive this year.<\/p>\n

All I did was call an ambulance, give consent to the surgeons at Emory, and then lay around eating and taking pain meds while a host of medical professionals monitored every breath and fluid.<\/p>\n

Tom tells me I’m wrong. “You survived a life-threatening trauma. It doesn’t matter what the source of the danger was.”<\/p>\n

My sister tells me I’m wrong. “I’m so proud of you for how you handled this and how you held up.”<\/p>\n

It’s true that when the aneurysm burst<\/a>, I kept insisting that this was an emergency until I was heard by someone who could do something about it.<\/p>\n

But I can’t take credit that there were competent professionals there to hear me.<\/p>\n

It’s true that, when I was at home crying rivers and felt that my will to live was slipping away, I got up off the floor. But I already had a life worth living for and people who want me to live it.<\/p>\n

We could go back and back in time, finding the source for every one of the million factors that kept me alive.<\/p>\n

Including the genes that I was born with and the people I got them from and the people my parents got them from.<\/p>\n

Including centuries of scientists of Europe and Asia, long before America existed, whose work laid the path for modern medicine, and all the doctors who followed that path.<\/p>\n

My life is an accomplishment made up of all of theirs. Where does it become mine?<\/p>\n

When I was born? Or on Nov. 15, when I crawled from the kitchen and picked up my phone to call for help?<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2015. It’s been a hell of a year. And I did survive it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My biggest accomplishment of 2015 is that I survived it. I like the sound of that – it has the right mix of crispness and surprise. But … nah. “Privileged white girl! What do you know about survival?” my inner critic hisses. The people who should be allowed to take credit for surviving 2015 are … read more Accomplished<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[319],"tags":[67,485,493,504,502,480,513],"class_list":["post-6328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inheritance","tag-67","tag-aneurysm","tag-brain","tag-recovery","tag-surgery","tag-survival","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6328"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6332,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6328\/revisions\/6332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}