I’ve been so freaked out, as of late, about too many things. Like um, getting stabbed, plummeting planes, hitting my head, bombs, falling things, etc. What is  with me? Almost 27 years old, these things are just now freaking me out? Like I just NOW have this awareness of the random, awful things that happen daily?

I expressed my insane fear to both my Mom and Dad while home. My Dad said that after a certain point, you just have to let it go and rest on your faith. My Mom said – as we shared Chick-fila in the food court (prime target for terrorist bombing. Thanks, Dad) – everything happens for a reason. C’est vrais, ma mere!

Everything happens for a reason, indeed. There is peace in this, at least.  Natasha Richardson’s death was random and tragic – but because of it, hundreds of lives will be saved, I don’t doubt – starting with that little girl to the left.

CNN reports –

‘Connie and Donald McCracken were watching CNN one evening last week when they learned of the tragic death of actress Natasha Richardson from a head injury. Immediately, their minds turned to their 7-year-old daughter, Morgan, who was upstairs getting ready for bed.

Two days earlier, Morgan, her father, and brother had been playing baseball in the yard of their Mentor, Ohio, home when her father hit a line drive that landed just above Morgan’s left temple. A lump formed, but the McCrackens iced it down and the swelling subsided within an hour.

“For the next two days, she was perfectly fine,” Donald McCracken says. “She had no symptoms. She went to school both days and got an A on her spelling test as usual. There were no issues whatsoever.”

But after hearing about Richardson’s death, the McCrackens wondered if Morgan was really as OK as she seemed. After all, Richardson had been talking and lucid immediately after her fatal injury.

When they went upstairs to kiss Morgan good night, she complained of a headache. “Because of Natasha, we called the pediatrician immediately. And by the time I got off the phone with him, Morgan was sobbing, her head hurt so much,” McCracken says.

The McCrackens took Morgan to the emergency room at LakeWest Hospital in neighboring Willoughby, where doctors ordered a CT scan and immediately put Morgan on a helicopter to Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, with her father by her side.

“I knew it was bad when she had to get there by helicopter in six minutes, instead of the 30 minutes it would have taken to get to Cleveland in an ambulance,” McCracken said.

When the helicopter arrived at Rainbow, the McCrackens were greeted by Dr. Alan Cohen, the hospital’s chief of pediatric neurosurgery. He whisked Morgan into the operating room, pausing for a moment to tell McCracken that his daughter had the same injury as Richardson: an epidural hematoma.

McCracken remembers standing in the emergency room, feeling like the life had just been sucked out of him. “My heart sank,” he says. “It just sank.”

Unlike Richardson’s, Morgan’s story has a happy ending. After surgery and five days in the hospital, she’s at home and doing fine. “Dr. Cohen told us that if we hadn’t brought her in Thursday night, she never would have woken up,” McCracken says.’

….What average person knows to seek immediate medical attention if they hit their head, even if they seem to feel fine? It’s certainly something we don’t realize, or have forgotten. Now, we certainly won’t forget. Also – if this had happened to a non-celebrity – it wouldn’t have had nearly as large of an impact.