Brigadoon

Brigadoon was one of the first live theatre performances that I watched. It transported me to the Scottish Highlands with the perfect blend of reality and fantasy, love and betrayal, adventure and suspense. The story has stayed with me. The music represents so much more than just lyrics… THIS is one of the many reasons I love theatre. Theatre is interpretive. It’s timeless. It resonates.

Let’s go on a journey into parts of my Brigadoon…

A hospital is not exactly the Scottish Highlands. No fancy sword fights or romantic music playing while I danced through the halls. I didn’t have the strength to walk down the hall. I was literally fighting for my life. It looked bleak. It felt bleak, to be honest. It felt like I was in the Highlands, surrounded by a fog so heavy that I couldn’t see anything around me. I heard voices. Lots of voices. Voices of doctors, nurses, social workers…. (Yes, I had a social worker assigned to me, as well as a Sister from the Catholic Church. When you’ve had to sign “do not resuscitate” papers in order to be admitted for a brand new treatment you get a plethora of people assigned to you. One morning I counted 20 people who had come in to see me before 10 am. I’ll save that story for another day…).

But, I clearly remember the day the fog started to lift….

My blood type is O negative, with an rH factor. This caused a few issues upon being admitted to the hospital, as I needed blood and platelets, STAT.  O negative is the universal donor, but it is quite picky about receiving only O neg. Because of the rH factor the doctors wanted me to have single-donor platelets. They did not have any single-donor platelets. My church, friends and family put out the word:  anyone willing to donate O neg would be fantastic. Urgent need.

Within a few days we had a list of over 15 people, many of whom I knew, who had signed up to donate. The first person on the list was my father. Throughout the first few days in the hospital, I received blood from strangers, some from far away.

Honestly, I do not know how this works in 2018. In 2004, where I was, once the blood and platelets started coming in from donations for me, the blood bank people would let me know. I didn’t know who exactly had donated the blood and/or platelets I was receiving, but I knew that it was someone who had signed up.

Strangers. Friends. Family. They all saved my life. Literally.

The day the fog started to lift was the day that first specifically-donated blood bag came in. It caused me to pause and think about what that bag meant. It meant hope. It meant others were giving of themselves, in the most personal way possible, to help me live… help me to have strength to fight.

That first bag also made me think about the first blood transfusion I received upon entering the hospital. I have no idea who that was from. None. That donation allowed me to live long enough to get my port put in so that I could fight this horrible disease.

Strangers. Friends. Family.

A community of life savers.

My community.

Thank you is so inadequate…

The day the fog started to lift.

Perspective is a beautiful thing, remembering what to focus on. In that moment I wasn’t alone, battling a terrible monster, trying to live. I was a girl in the Highlands who was being rescued by strangers, family and friends. This is what I feel when I watch Brigadoon now.

My story has everything that makes up great theatre: love, laughter, romance, adventure, mystery, suspense, betrayal, music; above all, it has hope.

“You’ll never find peace by hating, lad. It only shuts ye off more from the world. This place is only a cursed world if ye make it so. To the rest of us, ’tis a blessed place.”