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Life Support

While I am accustomed to speaking on stage at industry functions, my experience as a professional speaker is as unique as my fingerprint.

While the audience size may be as small as twenty or as large as a few thousand, something will stand out in every presentation that will give me that “this is why I’m here” feeling.

I often tell my “Life Support” story when I am at conferences.  “Life Support” is the story outlining the lessons I learned after waking from a coma. 

I was put into a coma because a life threatening virus was coursing through my veins, and systematically shutting down my kidneys and then my liver.  In addition to my kidney and liver shutting down, a heart infection followed, coupled with double Pneumonia.

“Life Support” was not only the medical equipment keeping me alive, but it also became a term synonymous with all the support created through the fabric of our lives. 

When I tell my “Life Support” story the audience feels the emotion I feel, they laugh and cry with me. When the talk is over, people will always come up to me in order to tell me the story of when they were sick, or when a relative died from a similar event.

Whether their story is rooted in an accident or by illness, the connection is there, and a tear is seen in someone’s eye (often mine).

After one presentation, a woman came up to me and asked if I seen or heard anything while I was in the coma. I told her that I didn’t recall seeing anything, but my family’s story is a little different.

My wife and children said that I was sometimes agitated, but calmed down when my hair was stroked. I was also told that tears once came out of my closed eyes when my wife was by my side.

This one particular woman explained that her daughter had been in a car accident and was in a coma for 21 days before she passed. She wanted to know if her daughter would have heard her from within her coma.

She said, “because of you, I now believe in my heart that she did”.

I never know how many hearts I touch when I deliver a speech, I may never know. I no longer count the standing ovations; I now watch for the tear drops that I can help dry.


If you are in Nova Scotia and would like some insurance advice, please contact Corry Collins:
corry@maritimewealth.com
902-444-7000


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