Despite some hardships at home, I finally made it to university.
Funny! From my youngest days, I’d always told anyone who asked that
I was going to be a doctor. So why did I change my application to
study law a few weeks before starting?! I still don’t know the answer
to that! But what it did make me was a lawyer with a very active
interest in medicine and the basic school level scientific education
which was supposed to support that career.
When I finished at university, my new found legal career got off
to something of an inauspicious start – the sole practitioner I
had elected to do my training with was suspended by the Law Society!
A few quick calls and I ended up with another, larger firm who
did largely litigation. THIS seemed more interesting!
And then it was the all too typical career treadmill – work hard
to impress the partners, an unexpectedly early invitation to join
the partnership, progress to a larger firm, LONG hours, seeing little
of wife and two kids who had by now come along, one more change
of firm and then – somewhat “out of the blue” – an invitation to
become a “second grade” judge – in this country still called a Sheriff!
But boy! Had I been working some long hours up until then!
Furthermore, if I was not in the office, I had the seriously flawed
male perception that it was acceptable for me to be out “doing my
own thing” to relax – playing rugby, flying gliders then climbing
mountains. Throw in a bit of skiing, some scuba diving and too much
drinking and you probably have the picture!
It all added up to LONG hours and much consumption of bodily energy.
So why could I no longer walk the one mile up to the Court each
day without increasing shortness of breath? I was fit – wasn’t I?!
I was coming on 40 but – hey! – it couldn’t be this bad – could
it?!
I had so little time for anything other than work and selfish pursuits
that I couldn’t find time to see a doctor. Anyway, I didn’t need
a doctor – did I?!
Then when I started as a judge, I very quickly discovered that
this work pattern was very different!
Each day, you had that day’s allocation of work to complete. If
you finished – for whatever reason – by 10.30, then that was your
day’s work finished! It very seldom took beyond 5 pm to finish.
So the day I couldn’t walk up the hill home without having to take
an “emergency” seat on the pavement before I fell over was the day
I decided to see a doctor – several years later than I should have!
I was very quickly diagnosed as having PPH. At that time – about
1992/3 – I didn’t even know what this was. I’d never heard of it
– despite my numerous medical litigations. The specialist told me
it was quite a serious condition and probably the only real treatment
was a heart/double lung transplant.
This had all happened within one week of my first contact with
my family doctor. It was all moving too fast! I couldn’t keep up
with it! I was told about the transplant one evening, in hospital.
I called my wife and told her and asked her to come in to talk about
it. Neither of us saw it as a particularly big deal, so we agreed
to leave it till her visit the next day. And now here I am, some
seven years on. I am very much wiser, I know quite a lot in layman’s
terms about transplants and the medical alternatives, I have passed
too many “milestone dates” beyond which it would be impossible to
stay alive without a transplant and – after an initial spell of
serious concern and depression about my lot – I am wholly at peace
with my circumstances. Indeed, I would go so far as to say I have
achieved a great feeling of serenity. I have been reminded in a
big way about the presence of God in our lives and the multi-faceted
part He plays and I am so happy now to leave it all to Him – let
go and let God!
And what else have I learned? Too many points to list conveniently
in a short note such as this. But a couple of the major points are
the ridiculous way in which we in the West seem nowadays to choose
to order our lives and to measure our perception of success, the
destructive nature of selfishness and the true worth and value of
non-material things which I had lost sight of in the “hurly burly”
years – friendship, kids, time for others. A $5 watch probably keeps
better time than a Rolex and a true friend is better than a former
colleague, worried about what you are going to cost him, when you
are “under sentence of death”!
Now, I do very little compared with all that I used to pack into
my days and weekends, but, boy! am I ever happier now!
