Something about the kidneys.

   I have never known my father to be afraid of anything in life, except Dialysis. (Dialysis is a procedure in which a machine cleans your blood of toxins when your kidneys cannot make urine anymore.)

     If we were in a hospital, i would spot Abbu looking at the frail patients in wheelchairs from the corner of his eyes, and I could always interpret that look with the knowledge of the stubborn self-sufficiency he has always displayed in life. His wish was that he would rather pass away while  he was still healthy , than be dependent and frail for any period of time.As Diabetes took a toll on his kidneys, his fears regarding disability grew. In his fear of ever needing dialysis for his kidneys, i saw the reflection of my own fear of needles as a kid. We know that  the time period of agony a kid experiences in fear of the needle is much longer than the duration of the needle prick .Same was the case with Abbu. The concept of Dialysis kept him perplexed long before it ever became an option to treat.

  So before moving to USA, i took him to a nephrologist to make sure his kidneys were in as good a condition as they can be in. The kidney doctor told Abbu, that in his lifetime he is not likely to need dialysis ever. Abbu was very  happy to learn that. On his way back home, he was smiling more than he usually smiles about things.  But i was lost in deep thought. 

I knew that a clinician making such a statement is either naïve, which the said doctor was not, or there is something else that lurks under the superficial understanding of his statement. And i found it out soon enough.  At a certain age, and with certain risk factors that my father has, the probability of a patient dying from cardiovascular causes is higher than that of their kidneys worsening to an extent that they would need dialysis.  The doctor said 'you are not going to need dialysis in your life' and i understood ' You are more likely to die from a heart problem before your kidneys are bad enough to need dialysis'

   Ah, different interpretation of a same fact can give you such widely varying degrees of comfort. And how easily we fall in the loops of interpretations and get falsely reassured by incomplete data.

Even the best of the thinkers among us do not think statistically, even if we may believe that we think rationally.

   Having said that, i am not detached from the emotional implications of what i heard. I send a wish to the cosmos that my Abbu lives a long and healthy life throughout the entire span of my existence. ❤️