Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires — disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way. – Bernie S. Siegel

In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. – Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter