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:
902-444-7000
Please like, share and comment on my newest post!
Comments
Post a Comment