Monday Morning Musings from the Emergency Room

Mitch Arnold • September 25, 2023

It was a Monday morning, and though I wasn’t thinking about it, I probably needed the attitude adjustment that was about to come. Just an hour into my work week, I stood up from my desk and took a few steps to pour myself some water from the sink, but I never made it to the sink. Instead, I tripped and fell flat on my face, literally. The blood falling in large drops on the floor told me that this wasn’t going to be an average Monday.


Like many people, perhaps even you, my attitude is lackluster on Monday mornings. Enjoying time with family and friends, and the absence of structure, I’m much happier on the weekends than when facing the structure and pressures of the work week. That, plus the realization that I’m as far away from the weekend as I can get, make Monday mornings a struggle. On this particular Monday morning, a few weeks ago, the struggle was intensified.


Fortunately, I work from home, and my wife was home with me, though she was outside tending to her garden. It was my four-year-old granddaughter who heard the commotion and came to check on me. She’s a sharp little girl, and I’m thankful for that, because she was able to go outside and get Lynda. I’m also thankful that my wife is a physician assistant who sees lacerations often during her work at a primary clinic. Despite my protests and pleas that she pop some staples in my head, like she’s done before, she insisted that I go to the emergency room to get fixed up in a sterile environment. It’s a Monday morning, she said, they shouldn’t be busy.

They were VERY busy. Not only was the waiting room full, there were three ambulances in the bay, presumably carrying patients with larger concerns than the large vertical gash I sported on my forehead, so I settled into one of the few empty seats, and began my wait. At my urging, Lynda and Presley left to run some errands. Not only do I struggle with Monday mornings, patience while waiting is also a weakness; however, I felt a calmness that day.


I didn’t have a phone or TV to entertain me, and the sparse newspaper that I bled all over didn’t take me long to read, so I was left with my thoughts and observations. All around me were people awaiting treatment and their loved ones who were trying to comfort them. Two young families with fathers who looked absolutely miserable were among the crowd. One carried a plastic pitcher as a safety net, in case he couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time to vomit. The other seemed to be suffering from a migraine or some other intense head pain. Both wives rubbed their husbands’ backs and encouraged them.


I didn’t find comfort seeing strangers suffering, but I found peace in the love and faith that filled the waiting room, and I was reminded that I’m not the only one with health struggles. Because I work from home, I often don’t see anyone but my family and the gym crowd during the week, and I rarely see anyone with a worse physical handicap than I have. Sitting in that waiting room, I began to realize that I had inadvertently became kind of smug in my ability to handle my daily struggles.


Struggle is universal. We’re all going to face it, if we haven’t already, and it’s often unpleasant. However, with the right attitude, we can put struggle in its proper place – as a part of life, but not a limiter of life. Ironically, my trip to the emergency room actually improved my attitude that Monday morning. It realigned my perspective and made me realize that my normal Monday morning self-pity was unnecessarily limiting my appreciation of the opportunities that possibly awaited me in the new week.


If you’re struggling today or any day, take a few minutes to reflect in gratitude and to remind yourself that you’re not alone, but that it’s up to you to find the right attitude to put the struggles behind you.


_______



For those keeping score, this is my second trip to the emergency room to get my head stitched up. One more, and the next one’s free! With the 26 stitches I got that day, plus multiple staples Lynda has added at home, my head is starting to look like a jigsaw puzzle, but I keep plugging along. Have a great day!

The Power of Post-Traumatic Growth

By Mitch Arnold • October 19, 2025
A couple of Saturdays ago, I found myself smiling and nodding, as tears of sadness ran down my cheeks. I was among friends I hadn’t seen for a long time, and I had a beer and a Philly cheesesteak in front of me, yet I was engrossed in stories of incomprehensible agony and triumph. It was a powerful juxtaposition, the kind you don’t easily forget. Lynda and I were at a charity event that we attend almost every year. The event is called Glow Gold, and its intent is to raise money for childhood cancer research. It’s one of many events held by Sammy’s Superheroes, an organization founded by one of my former students whose son Sammy is the namesake. For most of the event, the mood is joyful, with music playing and children running around in bounce houses and having their faces painted, while adults enjoy conversation, music, and good food and drink. The vibes are so casual that it’s easy to forget the purpose behind the event, until the speakers take the stage. These brave souls are typically parents, and they are there to share their stories of going through a cancer battle with their children. As a parent, and now grandparent, I don’t even want to think about childhood cancer and what these families have experienced. I imagine that the speakers feel the same way, and would rather be sitting in the crowd with me, and not reliving their pain in front of strangers. Yet, there they were. The first speaker was a young father with several children who only briefly attended the event, as he was busy with his children’s activities that night. He reminded me of myself several years ago, when I was busy with my own young children, except that I didn’t have a four-year-old in a fight for his life, a fight that had already cost him one of his legs. Next on stage was a mother who had struggled to have children, only to have her two-year-old die in her arms as she sat outside with him on a sunny summer morning. Her description of the experience was so vivid that it was easy to imagine – too easy. While both stories were sad and incredibly heart-wrenching, they were also oddly uplifting. Both parents spoke of how their children inspired them to become better people. They shared how their experiences, though they wished that they hadn’t had them, enhanced their appreciation of life, love and family. They no longer take time for granted, and they’ve learned that the trivial things that challenge us really aren’t that important. They have managed to grow, despite suffering from trauma that few of us will ever experience. These families are prime examples of something I have recently begun studying, Post-Traumatic Growth. Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) is a theory, developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, that suggests that not all reactions to trauma are negative. In fact, they conclude that mild to moderate trauma often leads to positive psychological changes, such as stronger resilience, heightened empathy, renewed appreciation for life and more meaningful relationships. No one wants to experience trauma, yet despite our best efforts to avoid it, trauma can still find us and impart devastating effects, some of which we may never recover from. Still, like these parents who have experienced the unthinkable, we can come out on the other side as better people. PTG gives us hope that this is possible. Focused on the social aspect of the event, I hadn’t readied myself for the emotional labyrinth that my mind was suddenly navigating that Saturday night. The smiles and nodding happened, when my thoughts finally caught up with my emotions. For all of the agony and despair we might encounter throughout our lives, there’s often a silver lining in the clouds, if we’re willing to look hard enough.

It's Been Years

By Mitch Arnold • July 27, 2025
When I was a kid growing up in Loup City, I went to Ord at least once per month to visit my grandparents and other relatives, and it wasn’t a trip that I was always eager to make. It wasn’t that I disliked seeing my relatives, but there were other things that I would have rather been doing. I sure couldn’t imagine making that trip on my own volition, but that’s exactly what I did a couple of Saturdays ago. My grandfather has been gone for more than 40 years now, and grandmother, more than 20. I can still remember them vividly, as well as their house and the heaping bowls of fudge and caramel covered ice cream I enjoyed in their kitchen as I listened to Grandpa tell stories between drags on his unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes. Though I resisted those trips as a kid, if given the chance now, I would love to make one more visit, but time has moved on, and all I have are the memories. I’m a grandpa myself now, and that has given me a new perspective on the fleeting moments that we enjoy with loved ones. Years pass quickly these days, and with each new calendar we pin to the wall, we lose touch with people and places from our past. New people and places come into our lives, and we push aside the past to make room for them. While some of that is necessary and a part of life, I think that it’s also important to stay in touch with our roots. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your uncles?” my wife asked as we began the three-hour trip from Omaha to Ord. “It’s been years,” I replied. We don’t have the family reunions like we used to, and because travel becomes difficult or impossible for older people, we don’t have the opportunities we once had to cross paths with them. If we’re going to see the people and places from our past, we have to make an effort to do so. That’s what I was doing on that Saturday morning. My hometown of Loup City is only a 30-minute drive from Ord and just slightly off the route between Omaha and Ord, so I also took the opportunity to tour the town I hadn’t seen in more than a year. I drove the sleepy streets I once roamed on my bike. I went past the church I attended through childhood, as well as the home I grew up in and the home where my maternal grandparents lived. I stopped at my grandfather's grave and symbolically shared a beer with him. After lunch at the marina at the lake just outside of town, where I spent many summer afternoons boating with my family, I headed to Ord, driving past my aunt and uncle’s farm that I hadn’t seen in more than a decade. The Ord visit with my uncles was brief, but more rewarding than I had imagined. The laughter, smiles and stories were so familiar that it was hard to believe that it had been years since we had seen each other. I even bumped into three cousins that I hadn’t seen in years. As we headed back to Omaha, I thought about those childhood visits that I once resisted and began to appreciate why my parents insisted that we make them. Time is fleeting and waits for no one, but we can’t get so caught up in the present that we forget the past and the people and places that helped shape us into the people we are. If you have been thinking about the people and places from your past, take that as a sign that you need to visit them. Don’t just wait for the next opportunity, make that opportunity happen. You will be glad that you did.