After the Storm

While much of the southeast suffers from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, I am only without power/Internet. My biggest problems are no coffee and having to read a good book by candlelight instead of watching Netflix.

I have no frame of reference for a third-world country, but I do know what it’s like to need health care. All day I’ve been grateful that my son is no longer here, that he is not struggling to get to some type of dialysis or other necessary healthcare service. And I’m praying for all those people who currently do, and for the hospitals and healthcare workers who are trying to help them.

A personal hurricane followed by a tsunami ripped through our lives in 2010, and we were never the same.

If you or a close loved one has never experienced dialysis, then I doubt you would ever think about it. But to know that your very life depends on a machine, to being hooked up (or hooking yourself up) so that a solution can go into your vein/artery and then watch as your blood flows out…. From the first time I saw it, I thought it was barbaric and I never changed my opinion.

The forever necessity of it. The not being able to leave home or town without extreme preparations. The sliding on icy roads to get to a clinic. The supplies that took up a room (once he started home hemodialysis). The “bad sticks” and “infiltrates,” the skyrocketing and then plummeting blood pressures, the accidental blood spurts. The migraines.

I know I was traumatized by it all, and I certainly understood why John was. After his death, his psychologist told me he literally had a phobia about it (which his providers had deemed “noncompliance.”)

So especially today, with no power, minimal traffic lights, and blocked streets, and four years after his death at age 36, I am glad for no dialysis and no need for emergency care.

More power to you, John, for all you survived.