Using My Wife’s Head

By Dave Balch

This isn’t the first time I’ve harped on trying to find the good in a bad situation, and it probably won’t be the last. As long as I have good examples I will continue to write about it, and today I have a great example.

One night about 7:30 p.m. I was in the kitchen when I heard a loud thud and the floor shook. I ran in the direction of the sound and found my wife, Chris, unconscious on the bathroom floor with her head against a tiled step into the shower. Blood was dripping onto the floor.

It was immediately evident that she had fallen for an unknown reason (later I found out she tripped over a cat) and cracked her head against the shower step.

I tried to remain calm even though I was screaming in my head and called 911. They came, put her in a neck brace, and took her to a hospital nearby. We waited for tests, then got results which indicated more tests… turned out that everything was ok; she didn’t even need stitches. It was quite a scare, though. We got home at 3:00am.

All’s well that ends well, right?

This has become an exercise in looking for the good in a bad situation:

1. This is the easy one: her injuries could have been a lot worse, including a broken neck (which they suspected, necessitating the 2nd round of tests).

2. I was home when this happened. I travel a lot for speaking engagements, so this is a VERY good thing.

3. The weather was good – what if there had been a bad snow storm or heavy fog, both of which we get where we live?

4. Her head missed the glass shower door by inches… if she had broken it, imagine what could have happened. Besides, do you have any idea how much it costs to replace that kind of door? (That was a joke, by the way…)

5. A good hospital was available to take her. Given the options we had, I shudder to think of what her experience would have been at the hospital that was the 2nd choice.

6. I got a good story and article out of the experience, and we can all learn from it.

The point here is that you can always find some good in a situation, even if it’s dire. When Chris was first diagnosed with breast cancer, we chose to look at it like this: she was otherwise healthy and would do well during treatment, we caught it early, and so on.

Find the good: it isn’t always easy to find, but it IS there. It will help you put your bad news in perspective.