Amber – My Fitness Motivation

It’s my oldest daughter’s 25th birthday today.  It’s  hard to believe that this much time has passed by since Amber’s first day.  It was one of the scariest days of my life.

The Fam - Christmas '08

She was born 3 1/2 months premature and weighed in at 1 lb. 13 oz.  Eventually she would get down to 1 lb. 8 oz.  The doctors gave her a 5% chance of living and said if she did manage to live she would most likely not be much more than a vegetable.

Kim and I had been married just shy of 2 years.  She was 21, I was 23, both super young and naive and didn’t really know what was going on.  We didn’t have any family in town, my mom and sisters had left the previous day for California.

We were camping up in the mountains when Kim went into labor.  She wasn’t really even showing yet.  We made the drive down as fast as we could and got to the hospital.  Kim was hemorrhaging badly.  They injected steroids into the uterus to get the baby’s lungs to stiffen so they wouldn’t collapse and seal with her first breath.

The goal was to wait at least 24 hours for the steroids to work.  12 hours later Kim’s blood pressure got so low that we almost lost her and at that point we decided that we’d take our chances and let Amber be delivered right then.

So, at one minute past midnight on July 8th, 2004 Amber Pannell made her way into this world.  The doctors didn’t expect her to make it through the night.  The doctors didn’t know what a tenacious spirit this one would have.

It’s the most difficult thing in the world to watch your baby daughter, the size of a Barbie doll struggle for life.  To this day, I’ve never experienced anything harder than to have to sit and watch an undersized infant fight to breath.  It was so hard not being able to do anything to make her more comfortable and ease the pain she was in.

I’ve also never seen anyone more determined to live and fight as hard as she did.  I am continually in awe of her.  Today she is 25.  She functions at around a 5 year old’s level.  She has a great sense of humor and is usually a kick to be around.

She had a tough time watching each of her 3 brothers and 1 sister pass her by.  That was always traumatic for her.  She’s aware enough to know she has a problem and sometimes that’s more than she can handle.

In spite of her hardships, she beat the odds.  She was oblivious to those odds we received the day she was born.  She chose to fight, she chose to work, she chose to overcome.  There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t feel completely inadequate to be her father.

Today, I’m overweight by over 50 pounds.  I know what the odds are for someone my size to overcome their weaknesses and get back into shape, but as I sit here writing, remembering the day that Amber came into our lives, I can’t help but feel that I owe her this at the very least.

I want to stick around a good long while to make sure that she’s well taken care of.  I can’t sit back any longer and procrastinate the day I get my butt off the couch for good and get back into great shape.

Kim and I have 5 amazing kids, that we couldn’t be more pleased with.  They are our reason for living.  I want desperately to lose this weight and get back into shape.  I owe it to my kids, I owe it to my wife and I owe it to myself to become healthy again.

Today is a milestone in my oldest daughter’s life, I think I’ll make it a milestone for me as well.  I will no longer be the overweight guy that needs to make a lifestyle change.  I’m now the guy making the lifestyle change and I will never look back again.

Thank you Amber for being such a great example to me of what it means to never give up, no matter what the odds.  Amber, you’re my inspiration, you’re my motivation, you’re my reason for succeeding.  I love you!