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Dialysate

August 6, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Stress crashes through the body like waves pounding the beach after a violent storm. Undulating periods of calm and terror. Regular and rhythmic then fluttering and panicked. Eventualities become possibilities while your stomach still lurches at the realities. Systolic and diastolic ratchet an invisible band tighter and tighter around your chest. At certain desperate moments, a family’s vitals may be less stable than the patient’s.

As you hold hands and make promises and pray to everything that will listen, you become a filter: a semipermeable membrane for emotions and ideas. In the flurry of emergency you are bombarded with quick decisions, choiceless consents, more medical jargon than a marathon of House, M.D. Many words are small enough to pass through – liver, kidneys, bleeding – but many more – critical, cardiac, infection – stick to you, wet and heavy, too grave and massive to slip through the holes of your spirit. As days pass into weeks, your filter gets clogged with the fear of the unknown and frustration of no control.

The dialysis machine does the same work. Pulling and pushing the thick red life through tiny tubes like an organ suspended in the air, a medical miracle in a whirring beige box. A cylinder stained burgundy, platelets and thick toxins forming a layer on the top, doing its best to continuously clean the blood that the kidneys cannot.

The dialysate hangs on a thin metal pole behind the machine. Dozens of bags filled with transparent liquid sag in a crude circle like a morbid bouquet of balloons. It looks as innocuous as water, like the boring stuff of sinks and showers, but it is in those heavy sacks that the secret hides.

It balances blood pH, adds vital nutrients, keeps renal failure at bay, artificially.

But it does more.

It lifts sinking souls, supports spirits, keeps hope alive, organically.

The dialysate is made of natural elements like potassium and calcium and magnesium, all the things you’d get from a bunch of bananas. Nothing fancy, no synthetic man-made magic. It creates a safe, supportive environment where the the blood can purge and purify. It gives the body a chance to find its way home. Without the dialysate the filter would fail.

So when the ultrafiltration of your body and mind sticks and binds, and the weight of a loved one’s pain overwhelms you, turn to your mother. Your sister. Your wife. Whoever it is that can hold you, cradle you, keep you strong where you alone would crash. Turn to your people to help you get all that negative gunk and gripping pain out of your filter. Wash your soul in the support and love of emotional-dialysate.

And when their filters struggle, too, when the darkness of all that unfairness blocks out the light of even the strongest optimism, remember that many are more stable than one.

The man in the bed, that brilliant, stubborn, wonderful man, the one fighting the silent battle of heart rates and blood pressures and medications, needs all of his filters – emotional and physical – to be clean.

Take every little victory and wear it like positively-charged armor. Pull out the best stuff. Throw the worst away.

You’ll be left with a net-positive.

Some freshly scrubbed optimism when all other news seems dire.

A golden glint of hope.

"Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity." Hippocrates

“Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.”
Hippocrates

Calling all Nurses

January 16, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

It’s easy being a patient.

The patient’s only job is to fight and recover, put all of their energy towards healing. Sure, it’s a miserable, pain-filled, nauseating experience, but they are allowed normally unreasonable exceptions when sick. The short tempers and illness related lethargy are tolerated, forgiven.

A lot of people affected by the same illness aren’t given the same allowances.

I often think about the nurses. Not just the ones who gently reassure me as I come out of anesthesia. Not just those who’ve helped my dad in this years-long battle. Not only the compassionate few who patrol hospitals halls in an effort to help people they don’t know.

I think about the nurses with no formal training, who don’t work in a hospital and can’t walk away from their jobs when the shift is over.

The nurses like my mother, my wife, my sister.

The people hurt by the horrible realities of cancer without experiencing any of the physical pain. The ones who selflessly exchange their own wants and desires for someone else’s; not because they have to, but because they want to. The ones who fight to make everything better using love, the best medicine they know.

I know that the fight is just as hard for them. Sometimes, maybe oftentimes, worse. I know that they are forced to see their love ones brought low, and are expected to stay strong when all they want to do is cry. I know that they don’t get breaks that they completely deserve.

To all those helping their brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and husbands and wives: thank you.

Thank you for being a stalwart champion of optimism when things look bleak. Thank you for never questioning that long drive to the hospital or the even longer nights by someone’s bedside. Thank you for being an emotional surrogate and partner in struggle.

We couldn’t do it without you.

But mainly, I want to thank my nurses. Even when my mom told me “everything was crap” I could hear the determination in her voice. Even when I felt like life had hit me with a big metaphysical garbage truck, my wife was there with a perfect hug. Even when I thought the world had run out of good, my sister reminded me that there are still some great people out there doing great things.

I dedicate this post to Denise, Becca, and Tiffany. I think I can speak for my father when I say that we would have never made it this far with our bodies and minds and sanity intact without all of your support.

And to all the other nurses out there, who are as beautiful and kind and amazing as these three, thank you too. Your patients appreciate you, even if it’s not always apparent.

Three of the best nurses I know, and two really good looking patients. Go team!

Three of the best nurses I know, and two really good looking patients. Go team!

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