So here’s one
Iain Henderson: If I Had a Place to Stand and a Lever I Could Fix The Internet … Excerpt: “Endless positive possibilities become possible when we move beyond the weaknesses in the current architecture, and build genuine digital capability on the side of the human.”
But I still miss the damn thing
My spleen was removed on this day in 1961. The doctors did it because they thought without a spleen my low hematocrit (~32%: anemic, technically) would go up. All they knew at the time was that the spleen’s job was filtering out old red blood cells (erythrocytes). Mine were mostly misshapen (resembling spheres, rather than frisbees), making them suboptimal at carrying oxygen and too easy for the spleen to destroy. But my hematocrit never went up.
Decades later, after science improved, doctors at Bethesda treating my sister (an officer in the US Navy) triangulated several medical disciplines to re-diagnose the problem we share (she’s anemic too). Rather than spherocytosis, we have dyserythropoietic anemia type II, which is also herditary (congenital), but doesn’t automatically suggest spleenectomy as a treatment. Instead (at least in our cases), they do phlebotomies (take blood). This reduces the amount of iron in solution in the blood system, which risks hemochromatosis, a kind of iron overload. But I also haven’t needed that in years.
Bottom line: my sister and I both have a mild form of the disorder. So we are fine, though down one spleen apiece.
Back when I was a kid (guessing around eleven), and they told me I was anemic, I asked what that meant. They said, “You probably can’t run a mile without collapsing.” So, the next time I was at the beach, I ran a mile. In high school, I ran a mile on an indoor track in under seven minutes. I also loved playing soccer and basketball. And skiing. So, no worries. I’m fine.
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