Major Illnesses and Injuries Quickscan
It requires more courage to suffer than to die.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Life can seem capricious:
• A lively young woman hops into the car to run an errand. Four minutes later she's dazed and injured, looking into the anxious eyes of rescuers from a pile of twisted metal and broken glass.
• A gray-flannel-clad executive clutches his chest and falls to the city street amid the litter — a victim of a heart attack.
• A rambunctious high school linebacker lowers his head to spear a ball carrier — and spends the next year immobilized and the rest of his life a quadriplegic.
• A new bride develops weakness in her legs and then goes suddenly blind. Extensive tests determine multiple sclerosis the culprit.
Each event was unexpected, unwanted, a crisis. Into these experiences pastors are called.
Sudden Incapacitation
Medical considerations. When injury or disease strikes, medical attention must be the first concern. Writes Eugene Kennedy, professor of psychology at Chicago's Loyola University, in Crisis Counseling, "The first common-sense rule, echoed in cliches like 'stand back' or 'give them air,' is the priority of getting adequate medical attention before achieving any other goal. One may be more inclined to handle the emotional aspects of the problem, but this is surely secondary when one is involved in an obvious physical emergency."
At the early stage of trauma, emotions enter in mainly in the realm of hope, the will to survive. Any physician can tell of people who gave up the will to live and died of injuries or illnesses they could have conquered. They will also tell of people who through pure grit and determination beat the odds and survived. The determining factor: the will to live.
How is the will to live encouraged? By giving a reason ...
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