I originally read this article on Digg. It really touched me but didn't bring me to tears. Though once I read the replies, specifically one by C4Strife, I had tears streaming down my face... I thought I'd share his comment on the article.
"Ok so I am an 18 year old male that just graduated from high school. When I was 12 I had a surgery "Pectus Excavatum" to repair my chest. It left me in the hospital for one week during which I was in the children's care (post-surgery) ward. Right after the surgery I was moved into my room which I shared with a boy around my brother's age (who is 15 months older than me). While I was in and out of conciseness that day but what I do remember is them talking happily. The next morning the boy was gone. My second day, when I was practicing walking I noticed this little girl. Maybe the cutest child I've ever seen, no more than two years old but she paler than the whitest sheets. Her mom was pushing her around in a red and yellow plastic car while attached to her was a drip (like mine) only her's was red. It was probably the scariest thing I had ever seen...I didn't realize that someone so young could be so ill. She had just had a kidney transplant and was forced to be constantly injected with fresh blood. On my fifth day I went to the playroom, the nurses had gone around telling our parents to bring us for a performance. It was a man and a woman, two singers but they weren't what I saw when I entered the room. I noticed a boy in a wheelchair who I had never seen before but right then I knew he was that boy who talked so happily, so healthily with my brother that first day. Yet here he was bound to a wheelchair and covered in electrical wires as a mummy would be covered in bandages. He was what you might call lifeless, but I know he was not. Even though I did not see any real movement from him I know that he was there trapped in his body that had gone from perfect just a few days ago to what it was in that playroom. I didn't get it. He was fine! Why did he look so, so not well? The wires were scary, they stemmed from his head and coiled around him. When I listened to him talk a few days ago he seemed nice, he seemed like someone I would be friends with. The musicians started playing "Brown Eyed Girl" and it was nice...It made me happy, it made us all happy. What happened next influenced my life more than any other event. That same little girl with the blood drip got up, i.v. in hand and started dancing. We all watched as she danced to music, we saw her smile and we could not help but smile, even the boy managed to smile. I did not understand it then, but I do now. Seeing the suffering of that boy right next to the hope of that little girl made me realize that even though there are some ***** up, some unfair things in this world I cant just bitch about it, I need to do something. So now here I am on the verge of begining my pre-med program. As I type this I am 18 years old. That boy did not live to be my age, Colby Curtin did not live to be my age but I will do everything I can to make it so that when I encounter a child like them they will live. The smile of that little dancing "Brown Eyed" girl made me realize I want to give kids like that the chance to smile, the chance to dance. Sorry if this post was not well written or sounds dumb to anyone but I felt like I just had to say it."
http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Pixa...ith_home_viewing_of_Up