f. Vita Brevis (Life’s short): Make the most of it while you can.

This afternoon I drove past the twisted metal remains of a car accident. 

A white sedan had been pushed up onto the footpath off a busy arterial road. Its driver-door was punched inwards, its bonnet was torn up towards the windscreen, and its engine was exposed and buckled. The early evening traffic inched around it like water trickling passed a rocky obstruction in a creek bed.

A fire-engine and a police car remained at the scene. However, I could see that the driver, and any passengers present, were gone. As was the ambulance. I assumed the occupant, or occupants, of the car would be at the local hospital, at that moment, in the Casualty department undergoing assessment and treatment of probably minor injuries.

I doubted that the accident had resulted in major trauma or death. You see, while the car had been damaged beyond repair, I could see that the cabin of the car had remained completely intact. The twisted and torn metal of the car’s periphery didn’t encroach on any part of the car’s interior. Like the eye of a violent destructive storm the cabin had remained unscathed while all about it was in ruin. The occupants, therefore, were likely to have remained fairly safe.

Well, I certainly hoped that was the case.

As I drove away my mind drifted back to the many times, during my life, when I’ve nearly died. There have been many. Probably many more that I’m even aware.

I’ve also seen hundreds of cases of amazing survival stories following ‘near-death’ accidents in patients during the 25 years that I’ve worked as a doctor. Also amazing are the cases when patients have ‘luckily’ presented for medical screens ‘just in time’ - when any further delay, even a few weeks, might have resulted in death. Or, when patients have survived incredibly serious illnesses and medical emergencies due to amazing ‘coincidences’ and against all the odds.

I cannot explain how this works. No doctor can. And virtually all medical professionals have seen these situations and heard these stories many times. We learn to accept that we can’t explain everything. Many medical people become spiritual as a result of our experiences (Not necessarily ‘religious.’ We learn to accept, though, that maybe some people are ‘helped’ somehow - beyond the help we can give them).

Sadly, sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes people die early and it just seems so unfair and cruel and unexpected.

In my own case, I have no idea how I’ve survived each of my many near-death experiences. Or why. I’ve asked my self numerous times: Why me? Why am I still here? Why not others in the same situation? So many other people -so much more deserving than me. It seems so unfair.

I don’t know the answer to that.  Maybe the work I was destined to do in my life isn’t yet complete. Maybe I have more lessons still to learn. Maybe I need to be here to help someone else.

I don’t know. No-one does.

However, driving away from the car accident today, I recalled a similar accident in which my own driver door was smashed inward, like the car on the footpath this afternoon, and I almost died:

The accident occurred in the late afternoon of a day similar to this one. I was then around 30 and I was travelling home from the hospital in Adelaide where I was working as a senior paediatrics registrar.

The clouds hung low and grey over-head as the darkness of the evening extinguished the remains of the day. The street lights appeared hazy through the drizzling rain and my windscreen wipers were making a regular thud thud thud sound - like a metronome out of time with the music which played softly on my car-radio.

I was locked in by traffic on three sides. We were stationary at an intersection where the lights were red. And, on the footpath adjacent to the passenger side of my car, a steel reinforced concrete stobie pole hemmed me in on the fourth side.

Suddenly - as my thoughts were drifting into the near future imagining myself picking up my baby daughter from childcare and then getting home to set the fire and put on the dinner - I became aware of the sound of metal buckling and twisting under incredible force adjacent to my right arm. Confusion and shock overwhelmed me. My car door was folding inward onto my arm and the right side of my body. My car was being crumpled by something incredibly powerful.  

It all seemed to happen in slow-motion.

It was as if time - during this potentially life-and-death experience - had become expanded: A single second seemed to extend into minutes.

I had time to think about about so many things: I considered what was happening to me. What were my options for escape and survival. Which one of those options would most likely work.  Which ones must I eliminate as impossible or impractical.

 All of these thoughts occurred in the space of only one or two seconds.  It was as if everything had slowed down - except my mind. My mind had became incredibly focused, alert, unemotive, and logical.

I had no time to turn my head to see what was ploughing into me - but with my peripheral vision I could see that a massive wheel on a giant semi-trailer was the cause. The semi-trailer was so high above my car that only the giant wheel could be seen, along with the side-mirror which hung down below the cabin-door.
 
I considered accelerating forward or reversing backwards - but stationary traffic blocked both of these options. I considered driving up onto the footpath - but the stobie pole was in the way. I considered undoing my seat-belt and climbing into the passenger seat to escape the crushing wheel - but there was no time for that. Beeping my horn was useless. That would rely on so many things beyond my control: the driver hearing it, the driver knowing what it meant, the driver responding to my signal. And the driver was so far from me that I couldn’t even see him. The semi-trailer was the largest one I had ever seen.

I didn’t even have time to pray.

Then, just as suddenly as the accident had begun ... the groaning of buckling metal and the pressure of the door pushing down onto my right side ... stopped. The truck pulled away into the lane, on my right, from where it had originated.

Time then returned to normal. My focus became less intense. The traffic began to move forward, as the intersection light had turned green, and the truck moved off with them.

I was safe.

However, my heart was still racing and I realised that my hands were shaking. A single thought then came to me: I needed to pull over the semi-trailer and let the driver know what he’d done to my car. I needed to get his insurance details and make him aware of how dangerous his driving had been.

I put my foot down on the accelerator and I drove in front of the truck - which was only slowly accelerating due to its massive size.  I indicated, with my arm out of the window, for the driver to pull over.  He did.

Shaking I got out of my car and walked back to the semi-trailer pulled alongside the road. I looked up to the window, six foot above the ground, from which a tired looking middle-aged man was peering down at me seemingly confused.

‘What?!’ he said.

‘You ran into me back there!’ I called up to him.

‘I saw you at the last minute … and I pulled out,’ he replied.

‘I think you’ll find - if you look at my car - it was a few moments after the last minute! My door is buckled. I could hardly open it!’

‘Oh!’ he replied.

He then opened his door and climbed down. He walked up to my car to take a look and shook his head. ‘I saw your lights … at the last minute,’ he said again. We exchanged insurance details and then he walked away, drove off, and I never saw him again. 

I don’t remember much about the truck driver. I don’t remember the features of his face. I don’t remember what clothes he wore.  But I do remember him repeating that he saw my lights ‘at the last minute’. 

And he did, really.  

He saw the lights of my car - warning him not to continue to drive into my lane - just before he crushed me to death with his giant semi-trailer. At the last minute something made him aware of my car lights driving alongside his truck, far below his own visual field, and out of the range of his rear mirror - which displayed only the cars behind him.  I was situated alongside and far below his truck. Virtually out of his sight while we were stationary at the lights. Also, the darkness and the rain and his own weariness at the end of a long day made seeing my car even more difficult for him.

Later, after my daughter was in bed and the dishes were done and I was sitting by the fire reflecting on the accident, I realised that I had so nearly been killed. While I had been busy going about my daily tasks in an automatic way - I had come to a sudden and unexpected  junction in my life: To live or to die. I had no control over the accident. Not in preventing it nor in saving myself during it.

Life can be over in a second. Sometimes unexpectedly.

I’ve heard it said that it's amusing when people say ‘if' I die because it is never a matter of ‘if’ but when.

Vita brevis.  Life is short.  None of us know how much time we have. But life is precious.  It is not easy. It can be tiring and disappointing and sad … but, it can also be beautiful and loving and wonderful and happy.  And, to a large extent, how we experience it and how we enjoy it is based on the choices we make.  One of those choices is whether we choose to see the cup half empty or half full.

When I was younger and working 60 hours or more each week in the hospital system as a paediatric registrar - I  read a questionnaire in a magazine:
 
It asked the reader to list their life priorities in order from one to five.  I wrote: Family, health, friends, leisure, work. In that order.

The questionnaire then asked the reader to list in order from one to five again how they spent their time each week.  I wrote: Work. Work, Work. Work. Family/friends. 

Back then, I had almost no leisure time. And, even when I was at home I was studying for my specialty exams, or writing up papers and talks. My ‘free’ time for all of my top four listed priorities amounted to only about 30 minutes each day. Especially once the housework was done (more work). Work filled the rest of my waking hours.  With study and housework - that amounted to 90 hours or more each week.

I felt so sad when I realised that the life I chose to live was in no way matching my stated life priorities. I considered how the years pass by so fast and they can never be retrieved. Later, after I had the first two of my four children, I felt even worse living a life so far from the one I really wanted to live: I had no time for myself or my family or my leisure or my health. I lived to work - not the other way around like I really wanted.

Soon after that, at the age of only 33 - when my eldest child was still just four and my second child was one - I left the hospital and my higher status job. Instead of working as a paediatrician I chose to live according to my life-priorities. Despite the fact that I’d put years of hard work and study into passing my specialty exams they didn’t make me happy.  They took away almost all of my time and my life. 

So, instead, I chose to find medical work which allowed me the time to be the mother, wife, friend, relaxed and happy person that I wanted to be. Work would come at the end of my list - just like in my list of stated priorities (I now work just enough to be able to pay my bills and save some money for a financially secure retirement).

And on my death bed, whenever that comes, I will never regret not having spent more time at work.

Finally, a couple of questions for you:  

* If you knew that you had only a short time to live - are there any things which you would regret not doing, not saying, not experiencing, not having lived?

* And, with regards to your life’s priorities, do you spend your time in a way which reflects this?

Put another way: 
- List, in order, the top five things you value in your life.  
- Now list, in order, the top five things that fill your time. 

Do the lists match?  
- If they don't match - how do you feel about that?  
- If you are disappointed by any mismatch in these lists - can you make any changes in your life which might make the lists more similar (ie. you get to spend your time - your life - as you really want to.  Spending time on the things you love and value).

Any little changes might help bring happiness and contentment into your life. It did for me.  Now I get to enjoy medical work and my family and friends and time for myself.  Yay!

Vita brevis. Life is short. I hope you get to live a life which is full and happy and leaves you with no regrets.