"Not a Single Lesson Was Learned..."

--Shinedown, "Through the Ghost"

The doctors, searching around my thoracic spine, looking for some reason for my middle-to-upper back pain, well, they found fluid in my lungs (my GP described it as being a small amount, which makes sense since I'm asymptomatic).

"You know, I don't mean to sound melodramatic, but I could be dying," I tell my mother over the phone while sitting in a study room next to the computer lab. The assistant of the lab comes by, looking sheepish, and then closes the door on me.

"You're going to be just fine," my mother retorts.

I explain to her that I didn't mean I was going to die tomorrow or even in the next year, but if I have congestive heart failure, I probably won't make it to sixty, much less like my grandmother from my father's side who is eighty-five, and has no (read: none whatsoever) chronic conditions. I told her that sure, they can treat heart failure, but it still kills you anyway. Towards the end, you have all sorts of problems, including shortness of breath (I've read of people afflicted who could barely get out of bed without getting winded) and extreme exercise intolerance.

But I explained to my mother that that's the crux of modern medicine: we have the diagnostic tools to find something wrong with everyone (with sole exception, of course, of my father's mother). The problem is sorting through the data, and deciding what is really clinically significant. And from there, finding effective treatment. It's easy to hop on some test-this-test-that bandwagon because doctors want to feel that they're doing the best possible job, and they don't want the patient to think he/she is being undertreated. It's easier to justify an MRI than to tell a patient to take aspirin and go home. People want to know. We have this insane desire to escape death, that medicine can grant us this gift, we just have to be observant and proactive. We just have to take this pill and walk two miles aday.

We can better detect breast cancer, but it still kills the same amount of people every year. Same with colon cancer. Why? Well, that's out of my realm of expertise.

So, is fluid in the lungs clinically significant? In a thirty-four year old, it is certainly odd. Does it mean that I have congestive heart failure and will die in a few years? Well, I have no idea. Dirk had/has (if he's still alive) congestive heart failure, but had no symptoms. He was overweight, sure, but his cardiac problems stemmed from an undiagnosed sleep apnea, which went years and years without treatment.

And, oh, yes, I haven't contacted Morpheus for five weeks (and, technically, one day), and I figure I only have two people on this planet who I have to avoid, this should be easy right? I have thought about emailing the English instructor because the poetry professor has decided to hold a faculty poetry reading (I've been invited). I emailed the poetry professor, and asked specifically if he could include the English instructor. I didn't get a yes or no on that answer. I thought about encouraging the English instructor to attend either way, but I decide that I should just keep my mouth shut.