Celebrating my existance

Sometimes something in your past comes along and startles you into a shocking realization.

Case in point: the Asian Flu epidemic of '57 - '58. It was a really bad one and I got sick in January of 1958. I wasn't the only one--50% of the kids in our local school came down with it. (We didn't have all the health warnings and Purell in those days.)

After I recovered, however, I continued to be sick every morning when I got up. I slowly realized that I was pregnant. A few months later, I had a miscarriage.

In yesterday's newspaper, I read an article about the increased threat the H1N1 virus poses to pregnant women. A high percentage of the fatalities so far have been pregnant women. At the very end of the article, it mentions that in the Asian Flu epidemic, 50% of pregnant women died from the disease.

This means I had a 50/50 chance of dying in 1958! Well, how about that!

It's crazy-making to contemplate that one might not be alive. But, if I weren't, a really great bunch of people wouldn't exist either. So today, I celebrate my four wonderful children, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren! They are my proudest "achievement"!