One of her best friends has a girlfriend who has a three-year-old baby. When the baby was about three months old, a babysitter, who was supposedly a good friend of the mother called to tell her that the baby was having some kind of a breakout on his hand. The baby's hand was red and swollen and the babysitter claimed the baby was having an allergic reaction to a medication she'd given him.
However, when the baby was taken to the hospital the medical staff said that no allergy could cause that kind of damage. They said it appeared the baby's hand been put in scalding water, and reported the incident to the police, who arrested the babysitter for child abuse. The babysitter eventually received a five-year prison sentence, which to me seems kind of lenient considering the damage to the baby's hand.
Over the past three years, the baby has undergone as many as six surgeries. The surgeries were required to keep the skin from tightening and interfering with the growth of the bones in the child's hands and fingers. But during the last surgery, a few days ago, the anesthesiologist and the doctor injected the wrong medication into the baby prior to the surgery and its heart stopped. The medical team was able to revive the child, but now the baby is in an induced coma and no one is sure whether it suffered brain damage during the period that its heart was stopped. It'll be a few days before anyone knows the outcome.
Even though I've been sober 28 years and rarely let much disturb me, this story bothers me a lot. The idea that an innocent child has undergone such trauma because of the actions of a deranged babysitter is far beyond understanding.
Incidents like this remind me that there is always someone who has suffered over and over again through no fault of their own.
I've been dealing with addicts and alcoholics for 28 years and during that time I've heard a lot of complaining about how life has treated them. And it's true, that we have many clients who have suffered during their lives – especially when they were children. But a way to get over stuff like this, in my opinion, is to realize that there's a lot of suffering in the world, that we're not the only ones who have been mistreated or been the victims of bad fortune.
I bring this up, I guess because many of us addicts and alcoholics for years used our terrible upbringing as an excuse to kill our pain with alcohol or drugs. And I was one of those who blamed my early childhood as the reason I turned out to be an addict and alcoholic. It was only when I realized what I was doing to myself that I decided to accept my past and cross over into the land of recovery.
Anytime we feel like our lives are tough we can look around and see others – like this baby – who are undergoing extreme suffering through no fault of their own. When we can see things from this perspective it's much easier to stay clean and sober and be grateful for the lives that we have.
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