Expect the unexpected— in health as in business

Sometimes our best expectations produce the worst results, and sometimes the ‘worst’ things that happen to us eventually produce the best results

“Life is not what you expect: It is made up of the most unexpected twists and turns.” —Ilaiyaraaja

I’m writing this piece from my room in the hospital where I have been confined for the last four days. Considering what I had gone through in the past week, I wasn’t sure if I had the physical energy or the mental clarity to come up with a coherent article to meet the next deadline. That was when my ikigai (the Japanese term for a person’s reason for getting out of bed in the morning), which was the subject of my last article, kicked in. So here I am, writing.

A few days after my birthday last week, my housemate suddenly developed a high fever, together with body aches. To eliminate possible COVID-19, I arranged for a home reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction test, and I had myself tested, too. After one day, both tests came out negative. But by that time, I was also beginning to feel under the weather, which soon led to a high fever.

So, for good measure, we also had ourselves checked for dengue. She also tested negative, but this time my test came out positive. The bottom line: She only had the flu but I had dengue fever. Somehow I had been bitten by an infected Aedes mosquito—something I had never expected would happen to me.

Blindsided

In short, while everyone’s focus has recently been on the COVID-19 virus, I had been blindsided by another, equally pernicious pathogen, the DENV virus, which had taken a back seat to the former in the past year.

I found out there are four types, so a person can theoretically contract dengue four times during his lifetime, because being infected by one type does not confer immunity to the other three.

Although both COVID-19 and DENV viruses have roughly similar mortality rates (less than 1 percent for typical dengue and 2.5 percent for the more serious dengue hemorrhagic fever), the good news is that dengue is not transmissible from human to human. So even if there have been a number of widespread dengue epidemics in history, particularly in tropical countries, there has never been one of pandemic magnitude.

In my case, I was particularly concerned about COVID-19 when I started becoming feverish because I had celebrated my birthday a few days before with my four daughters and three sons-in-law. So when the diagnosis of dengue was confirmed after two separate tests, my daughter, who was with me, and I both heaved a big sigh of relief.

When I exclaimed, “Thank God it’s only dengue!” we both broke out laughing, because before the pandemic, dengue was considered the viral illness to be feared! “It’s only dengue” would have been a very odd reaction. Everything is so relative.

What is the “takeaway” in all this? There is an apocryphal anecdote about a fitness buff who went jogging every day to keep in shape. In one of his daily runs, he was run over by a runaway truck and he died on the spot. The brief epitaph on his tomb reads, “Here lies… He died in perfect health.”

This example may seem both frivolous and callous, but together with my ongoing experience, the life lesson is clear, and it’s simply this: Life is full of surprises, and they can come any time in any form, especially when we least expect them. Sometimes, when we are worried about something happening, an entirely different thing blindsides us, rear-ends us, or hits us squarely head-on.

Life lesson

This is akin to, but not exactly the same as, another life lesson I mentioned in a previous article, i.e., sometimes our best expectations produce the worst results, and sometimes the “worst” things that happen to us eventually produce the best results.

For example, some time in the past, I consummated a big business transaction and hoped I would get paid early. I did, but because I had the funds, I made a bad investment and lost a huge part of my earnings from the original transaction. If I had gotten paid just a little later, the opportunity for the bad investment would have passed, and I wouldn’t have lost money.

On the opposite end, when my company was forced to part ways with our original multinational partner, we lost twothirds of our business, and I thought that was the end for us. It turned out we found a better partner, which led to unprecedented long-term growth for our firm, making it a leader of our industry to this day.

Back to today in my hospital room, while waiting for the doctor’s final decision whether or not to give me a transfusion to increase my dwindling number of blood platelets, I have plenty of time to mull over yet another valuable learning in life, from actual experience. This will prepare me better for any unlikely surprises that may come out of the blue.

Meanwhile, whatever the outcome of this unexpected adventure to kick off my eighth decade, I always keep a grateful attitude to God and the universe, because I believe there is a purpose for everything that happens in one’s life.

In particular, I thank in advance my doctors and the hospital staff who are still looking after me, my family and my many friends who continue to pray for my recovery from this “other” virus that came all of a sudden from left field. —CONTRIBUTED INQ

Note: The author did not need a transfusion and was discharged from the hospital a few days after writing this article.