Zen

Evening

Lara has been home for longer than a month (was it 24 April?). Truth be said: she is in better shape now than when se was first brought in. At the time, she looked awfully sick to the point where I caused precipitated travels by a number of people from faraway places (sometimes upsetting their travel plans). What else is there to do? I am the whistle blower and I don't know what I am talking about. A hazardous position. Then again, highly trained doctors didn't know how to be more precise in their predictions either. "Whatever needs to happen, do it now!" was their best advice.

Lara has been stable for a long period of time, despite good and bad days. What we all have to understand and accept is that Lara's health is extremely fickle. What looks like stable one minute, may rapidly take a turn for the worse, the next. (Just now her fever shot up, sending everybody into code orange.) Her immune defense system is totally down and her blood platelets are almost absent. This makes her super-susceptible to haemorraghes and pathogens of all kinds. Both may be lethal. The antibiotics, as I keep repeating, can only do so much without white blood cells, especially neutrophils, of which she has precious few. Should she develop another infection (pneumonia, intestinal), it could become very nasty very quickly. If the infection would turn into sceptic shock, the consequences might well be fatal. (She survived septicimia twice last year, but she started with a much better constitution at the time.)

Humans may well have a congenital tendency of extrapolating an upward curve they find in somebody gravely ill, They tend to think that stable is for ever until it turns to better. Deep-down we are optimists because that habitus corresponds to our survival. Survival is the most basic of human instincts; and with instincts you don't negotiate. Still we have to force ourselves from time to time to inject a bit of realism into our thinking. It corresponds to reason, residing in a much newer part of the brain. As we do that, it may tell us we should not take the status quo for granted.

If, on the other hand, we wish to do both, i.e. being a believer and a realist, then we should perhaps reinforce the mantra I hope many of you still exercise: healthy, healthy, healthy! Say the extra prayer, do your zen, light that candle. Hope for a miracle. You may still be proven right.