Toughness

A neighbor of ours is about to have her second baby. Her husband just told us a story about her first delivery. Her water evidently broke at 11PM one night, so at that point they went to the hospital. The doctor gave her an epidural anesthetic when she got there, but for various reasons the baby was not born until 7 PM the next day.

When the doctor was sewing her back up after the delivery, he asked her if she could feel anything. She replied yes. The doctor then asked the nurse to check her epidural status; it turned out that her anesthetic had worn off around midday, roughly seven hours before. But she had never said a thing.

The next day the nurse told her, "I've been doing this for thirty years, and this is only the second time I've helped deliver a baby to a woman with those post birth complications who had absolutely no anesthetic. And of those two, you're the one who didn't complain. I just want you to know, I'm coming in here on my day off to tell you this just because what you did was so impressive."

If you met my neighbor, you would never think, wow, that is one tough woman. She gives off none of those vibes. She's not a princess, but neither does she come across like any kind of daredevil.

She's just soft-spoken and polite.

You never know what size or shape toughness is going to arrive in.