When I was seventeen I contracted amoebic dysentery in a Papua New Guinean village while volunteering at a youth camp. I thought I might die. I could not keep anything inside me but when I stood up for the necessary bathroom visit, I fainted. My mother, a nurse by profession, held my forehead while all my bodily fluids escaped with projectile force. At night, as soon as I cried, “I need help,” my father’s feet hit the floor and raced down the hall to come to my aid. My mother soothed and my dad strengthened. I needed both for comfort in my suffering.