As parents, our instinct was to attack the problem full force from all directions, reaching out to every neurologist in the country with a million questions, pulling all-nighters poring over medical journals and Googling for a cure or even a diagnosis, even researching alternative medicine. Maybe this choice seems obvious, but it wasn’t. One made this challenging situation heavier, the other made the challenging situation lighter. What came into view was that there were two paths open to us. All we wanted in the world was for Eve to get better. With each unfruitful doctor’s visit, it became harder and harder to see the road ahead. This is the stuff true suffering can be made of.
The doctors couldn’t find anything as to why a vivacious daughter would go into free fall. “If your job is to keep the fires burning for an indefinite period, you can’t throw all the fuel on the flames at the beginning.”Įvery day brought more visits to respected neurologists who looked at us with furrowed brows and, in one instance, literally shrugged his shoulders. They could not offer us even the beginning of a diagnosis. What made the situation worse was the doctors couldn’t explain any of it. The light, once so vibrant and bright in Eve dimmed, until it seemed to go out entirely when she was hospitalized after a major seizure. It took her two full minutes to write her own name, and hours to eat a meal. We noticed the right-hand side of her body responded at a slower speed. Within just a few weeks, she could answer in only one word sentences, and spoke in a slurred and monotone voice. He said, “you might want to see a neurologist.” From there, her symptoms worsened daily.
On a routine visit with a physical therapist, he noticed Eve didn’t respond properly to basic reflex tests. Pretty age-appropriate behavior-or so we thought. Then Eve turned 14, had a growth spurt, began to feel tired often, talk to us less, and took longer to do her chores. Eve read endlessly, devouring books about horses, bees and insects, and wrote about her own adventures in a journal every day.
She ran barefoot whenever she could, wrestled with her younger brother on the trampoline for hours at a time, named the chickens, carefully caught lizards by the dozen and gently released them. Some family friends of ours still recall how she climbed to the top of their massive 50-foot fir tree the first time she visited their home. She can only do it for a few seconds before bursting into laughter. She simply cannot stay cross, even when she tries to be grumpy. She is a slim, brown-eyed, blonde-haired girl with a mischievous grin. One of our daughters, Eve, especially thrived. In short, we found ourselves living in a little piece of heaven on Earth. We took morning walks and planted a garden with apple trees, grapevines, and melon plants.
Our children spent long days playing outside with our happy dog, riding horses, or playing tennis. Not long ago, my family and I moved into an idyllic community: white picket fences lined the streets, no street lamps, and there were more horse trails than roads. Listen to the audio version-read by Greg himself-in the Next Big Idea App. Below, he shares 5 key insights from his new book, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most (available now from Amazon). Greg McKeown is a bestselling author and host of the podcast What’s Essential.