Having now spent five solid weeks in hospitals this year alone for all sorts of infection-related issues, I’ve noticed a pattern where as I get closer to getting better and going home, it starts to hit me just how incredible modern medicine and its providers can be…
Like this morning, they did an echo to make sure my heart hadn’t gotten damaged by this infection and I was able to lay there on my bed and actually watch my own heart beating, complete with seeing how my blood was flowing through it!
Or how these annoying electrodes connected to my chest allow me and a bunch of nurses real time access to my heart rate, which was pretty elevated when I got here but thankfully has mostly returned to normal now.
Or even the new straw that they stuck into my shoulder this morning to replace the infected dialysis catheter that got removed on Tuesday so that I can continue receiving lifesaving dialysis to filter the toxins out of my blood because my kidneys don’t really work anymore.
At least, the dialysis part applies for another 5 sessions until I lay down on a table with bright lights overhead once more, this time to put another human’s donated kidney into my body to take the place of my broken ones, which is a thing that modern medicine actually does now instead of just letting people die of organ failure like they did only 70 years ago!
It’s both amazing and terrifying how this collection of organs and flesh and bones work together to make up life as we know it as humans, and that we’re able to “fix it” in the miraculous ways that we are today, however something that I’m also becoming more keenly aware of is that there are also things that we can’t fix as well as risks that come along with the fixes that we can do that I don’t want to think about, but can’t help but consider because I have a family waiting for me at home who I’m nowhere near ready to say goodbye to yet.
So 12 days left until I give our medical system another spin and our biggest collaboration to date! We can do this, science – I have 99% faith in you…