Reality.

It's been a while, but we've finally been treated to a patient presentation. The GI module had a patient back out, so we just had a dry recitation of facts, and that only on one occasion during an almost two-month battle with the stomach. Renal has come through for us, and we had probably the most touching meeting with a patient today.

Today we met a woman who went through many years of hardship and two kidney transplants, but ended up beating the odds and living well beyond the 50-year-old lifespan that was predicted by the doctors in the 80's. Being in sales, she was very comfortable with the audience and told her story without any assistance from the professors who typically guide the process along.

It was remarkable to be thrust into the reality of the patient's experiences where we would normally talk about transplantation techniques and immunosuppressive drugs. In my computer past, it was remarkably easy to put oneself into the users' shoes and try to look at things from a perspective of someone who wasn't familiar with technology. It's quite a different thing to find yourself confronting a patient who needs not only non-technical language, but also a simple human consideration for their emotions and fears. Our patient went through years of dialysis, and two kidney transplants. The second transplant worked out, and today she is reasonably healthy, though she will be immunosuppressed for the rest of her life in order to maintain the kidney.

We often hear about transplants or dialysis in a "no big deal" type of context. These words can become routine, yet they provide an umbrella for so many individuals, each with a rather sad story to tell. Although I don't know the statistics, I do hope that the first time transplants work out for majority of the patients.