good medicine

I continue to be amazed that doctors can take an organ out of one body, transfer it to another, and have it work.

A woman I know (not well; I know her daughter better) had a liver transplant this weekend.

She had been sick for over a year. There were times she came perilously close to dying; at one point, her daughter said, "Ma is in the hospital again and she says she's so tired of fighting that she's ready to go, if that's what's going to happen."

But somehow, she managed to keep fighting, got better enough to withstand surgery, and this weekend a donor liver became available.

She had the operation Saturday; Sunday in church her daughter was cautiously optimistic: she said her mother had come through the operation well and "as long as she doesn't throw a clot or reject her liver, it will be a success."

Well, as of last night (the church secretary e-mails this news out to us), the woman was sitting up, eating a little, and her skin tone and the color of the whites of her eyes had returned to normal. Normal for a healthy person; not "normal" for what she had been while in liver failure. Apparently she's going to be moved out of ICU sometime today.

So as long as her body doesn't reject the liver, it looks like it worked.

(And yes, of course - many many people have been praying for the woman and her family during this time, and there were a lot of happy faces Sunday morning to learn about the operation's apparent success. We are a small group but a tight one and always rejoice when something good happens for one of our members.)

As I said, transplantation amazes me. It seems like one of those things that should not work, but it does. (And yes, I know, it doesn't work all the time. But when it does, it's amazing.)

And I have to say - this is where I part company with those Christian groups who believe that prayer can cure all diseases without medical intervention, and that medical intervention is wrong, and if the patient dies (even when there's some intervention that could save them) it was God's will.

I know there have been a couple high-profile cases of parents who basically let their children die because they could not believe that medical treatment could be OK.

And you know? I've known a number of doctors (and potential doctors) over the years who are Christians and who would be profoundly frustrated at that attitude. I've had doctors tell me they think that their skill and talent were gifts from God and that they were put here to alleviate people's suffering and help people be healthy.

There is a difference between a person close to the end of their life saying "No more heroic treatment; help me be comfortable and let me make my peace with my family" and someone refusing treatment on behalf of another person, when that person could be saved. Especially when it's a child.

Sometimes I wonder if, because we in America generally live an existence where serious disease or serious health problems are rare, we get a little complacent. I've kind of been watching the vaccine debate - while I agree it's possible for there to be rare cases of an individual having a severe reaction (like an allergic reaction) to a vaccine, and it's tragic when it happens, I remain firmly unconvinced that vaccines "cause" autism. (Which is the argument many make). What I've seen of the science and statistics on the matter shows there is, at best, a correlation - meaning, very likely, that childhood vaccines are administered and autism is typically diagnosed AT THE SAME AGE, but one does not cause the other.

(And it seems there's a genetic link for autism; there are clusters of people - Silicon Valley engineers being one - where there seem to be more autistic children. Engineer jokes aside, some have suggested that the whole autism-Aspergers-normal thing is a spectrum, and engineers tend to be farther toward the atypical end of the spectrum...and it's just sort of population genetics acting there, selecting for certain traits....)

(And I've also heard that in some cases early interaction with adults vs. being parked in front of the TV can be kind of a tipping point in some cases. That, I'm less prone to accept, because if that were the case, I'd expect to see very high rates of autism in some urban centers where the parents basically use TV as a free babysitter. Not that heavy early TV exposure doesn't have an effect on developing brains; I just remain unconvinced of the idea that it can either "cause" autism or send an at-risk child over the precipice.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh, vaccines. Anyway, there are those who crusade against childhood vaccines: they're risky, they say. Unnecessary.

I think of my nearly 90 year old aunt talking about the "polio summers" when she was raising her oldest children, and I don't think vaccines are so unnecessary. And I think about what I've read about the diphtheria epidemics. And about the books I've read about people who went blind or deaf (or both) as a (rare, but still possible) sequela of having measles.

And I shudder to think what would happen if we had some kind of epidemic outbreak of a bad disease for which there was no vaccine. Would the same anti-vaccine crusaders be calling for the government to "do something" to protect them and their families?

Anyway. I am thankful for the state of medicine that we have. I am thankful that I can walk into my local Health Department in October and get stuck in the arm (even though I don't like needles) and most likely be protected from the flu as a result. I am thankful that if I get strep throat, my doctor can give me antibiotics that will kill the bacteria and allow me to recover. (That's another thing - it's kind of hair-raising to read what we regard as minor infections were like in the era before antibiotics. Supposedly the first use of commercial penicillin was on a woman who was dying of sepsis following an otherwise normal childbirth...her husband consented to the experimental treatment because he figured she'd be dead by the next day anyway...and a couple days later, she was sitting up in bed, asking for food).

And I'm thankful that surgeons know how to take a liver from a person who has died, sever all of the various ducts and blood vessels, put the liver in someone whose liver is failing, reattach all the things, and have the liver WORK. I'm grateful for it and it also amazes me.

(And yes, I have the little box checked on my driver's license, and my family knows, if something bad happens to me...I want whatever are usable of my organs to go to help someone else.)

And I fail to see how some could imagine those various treatments - vaccines to prevent horrible diseases like polio, and antibiotics, and surgery - are so removed from God that they must not use them, and pray for deliverance instead.

Because, by that extension, you should not accept food that's grown in an area where fertilizers or pesticides are used, or from animals that have been vaccinated. Or you should refuse to use electricity or other "modern" conveniences.

Granted, there are some things we "can" do that I am unsure at best we "should" do (and things like human cloning, that I think we should not do). But so many of the modern advancements that pull us out of the dark ages have done nothing but good. I'm reading a book right now on the history of plumbing and I am even more thankful for the fact that we have flush toilets and water treatment plants and that I can turn on the tap in the morning and drink the water that comes out of it without fear that I will develop dysentery or succumb to horrific heavy-metal poisoning.

I tend to think some of the greatest human advancements as far as safety and medicine are concerned are:
1. Hygiene, especially as far as water and indoor plumbing are concerned
2. Vaccination
3. Antibiotics (even though they can be overused)
4. Pasteurization
5. The germ theory of disease (though 2, 3, and 4, probably wouldn't be possible without that, so maybe that should rank higher)
6. Surgery
7. Anesthesia
8. Modern dentistry. (As much as I hate to go to the dentist. As much as I'm dreading the appointment next month to get my tooth prepared for and fitted for a crown).

There are probably others I'm forgetting - so many of the advances that would rock the world of people in the 17th century are things so common and widespread as to be almost invisible today.