Paulo Dalla Nora Macedo - Collateral Beauty Related Experience

Paulo Dalla Nora Macedo - Collateral Beauty After watching this movie, I decided to write about it to share my experience. I am doing this as an exercise of self-awareness and for the benefit of others, even if they never have a similar experience. After all, it is only necessary to be alive to come across situations in which this philosophy applies.

We are in Recife, Northeast of Brazil at dawn on June 22, 2012. Our first child, whose sex we did not know yet, was almost "there" after 40 weeks of a healthy pregnancy, without any intercurrence or much preparation. It was early morning when my wife's water broke, so we rushed to the hospital. When we arrived, we began the process of waiting, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Doctors were not alarmed 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 hours into contractions, but the delivery did not start.

Suddenly, everything became a mental blur as we rushed to the operating room for an emergency C-section. They put me in a small corner of the room. I saw, from there, that the baby was born, but the only sound I heard was the frantic movement of the doctors, who quickly removed the baby from the room. It was night by now, and a staff member came back and gave the information: It was a girl, and she was fighting for her life, being reanimated, because she had a severe lack of oxygen in her brain.

Automatically, we switched to the “problem solve” module to figure out what to do to improve little Anne’s chances. I found out from my sister, who was living in São Paulo, that a hospital down there was using a body-cooling technique that slowed down the 72-hour wave of cerebral damage that results from a lack of oxygen. The issue was that Anne was still critical in Recife, which was a three-hour flight from São Paulo. Nevertheless, after assessing the risks, we decided on an aerial ICU removal, which was only possible on Saturday night.

As a final precaution, in addition to the oxygen support installed in the plane, we borrowed a spare oxygen support machine from the hospital. We departed at 9 pm Saturday from Recife to São Paulo. After one hour of a very bumpy flight (thanks to the winter monsoons in the Northeast), the device in the plane shut down inexplicably, but we were able to install the new one in less then 30 seconds, so her level of oxygenation was fine throughout the entire flight. We landed safely in São Paulo and were taken directly from the tarmac to the hospital. Finally, there we were, a little more than 24 hours after the birth, starting the protocol of cooling off the body to mitigate the celebratory damage. Anne spent three months in the ICU, and she was able to breathe without support after almost a month in the hospital.

From there, we embarked on a search for treatments and therapies around the world, visiting stateof-the-art medical technology centers. Anne still does not talk or walk, but it’s revigorating to see

her improvements in communicating and controlling her body while she plays and laughs. Also, she understands context very well because the cognitive area of the brain has been preserved. We continued with our journey by moving to São Paulo for better medical assistance. Now, we have faith that our Anne will go far, far away.

What I learned a little bit down the road was not to miss the “collateral beauty” and not to get entangled in the difficulties and frustrations of the question “Why us?” I understand that the situation has had the power to reveal feelings and experiences that I would never have been able to experience otherwise. It also has given me a different perspective on the challenges of life. This is collateral beauty. Of course, this beauty is not intended to replace the “primary beauty,” but it does not despise it or negate it, either. I just experience it.

At a time when prejudice against differences on the global stage is experiencing a resurgence, I wish that all of us could wake up to the collateral beauty in 2019, always and in any situation.