Acidosis

soul crushing
guilt
a sick sick mom
gorked baby?

how can my omission cause such catastrophe?
why did it happen?
a sleepless 32 hours
I had to talk to another family
whose brother's lung was full of blood
whose liver had failed
heading to the ICU

maybe excuses
maybe justification

stumbling from hospital in a daze
I didn't check on her
I went and slept
and woke
and dreamed
of people drowning in their lungs while I watched helpless

tragedy happens
and I have often stood and witnessed
counseled
listened
discussed
even helped
but not caused

I don't want my actions to matter this much
don't want my life to make a difference
my being has deadened

The Harvest

Its strange that we call it harvesting. Harvest makes me think of golden wheat fields, rich green maize fields, piles of potatoes, or stacks of pumpkins. The end of a growing season, a time of plenty. This harvest was different. She was young, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister. Only in her thirties, with a bleed of unknown cause in her brain. On the medi-vac flight down from northern BC she had an uncal herniation, where your brain squishes out the bottom of your skull from the increasing pressure. Technically she was dead, although her heart was still beating and blood pumped through her body. Her family agreed to donate her organs so she came to St. Paul's to be kept alive for the harvest. Corneas, liver, kidneys, heart. I suppose it was the end of a growing season in a way.

I don't know who got the other organs, but I know who got one of the kidneys. It was a guy in end stage renal failure, living on dialysis. To me watching a kidney transplant is a miraculous process. It sits cold in fluid, grayish white, in a specimen container that I've only seen in the anatomy lab. Just a dead piece of tissue to my eyes. But the vein is delicately sewn into the belly of the recipient, the artery perfectly attached and then this dead flesh goes dusky and slowly pinks up, pulsating with blood and life. Warm and slimy wet under my sterile gloved hand and suddenly the worm-like ureter squirts out pee like cold air hitting a diaperless baby boy. Its nothing less than magical.

Of course, kidneys don't only come from cadavers or people with brain death, they come from living donors as well. Like sisters. There were two sisters this week who donated to their siblings. It made me grateful for my sisters, you never know when you'll need a spare part... in fact, I should probably call them more often anyway.

There's a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro called Never Let Me Go. It takes place in a dystopian Britain where humans are cloned to be organ donors, and they slowly donate until they 'complete' and die. I found it deeply haunting in its suggestions about what makes people human. I'm awed by how life can give life and death can also give life. I hope my life and death bring both the beginning and end of a growing season. Just for the record, when I die, at least stick a mango seed in my mouth and bury me somewhere fertile.