Saturday, March 7, 2015

Blood Intimate Blood

Blood is a very intimate thing, so you can hardly blame me for feeling a bit shy and hesitant about sharing the sight of my  blood with the world. Usually it is unseen inside the body. In the case of hemo-dialysis*, blood must flow outside the body in order to pass through the artificial kidney and then return, cleansed of toxins and fluid overload back into the bloodstream. 



Bamboo Shoots Inc crew on behalf of Sasktel MaxTV at dialysis pod.
Can you blame me for being shy and nervous about showing my blood -outside of my body- to the world? I am concerned...will the sight of this be more traumatic to the viewers as it was at first to me?



Blood having "Out-of-Body Experience".

I had to shed my misgivings before I could go ahead with filming this segment of the documentary. Our producer Amanda Bosiak was so warm and loving that everything flowed effortlessly on set. The "set" was my dialysis pod, at my request to raise more Awareness of Kidney Health. 

*Hemo-dialysis is a technological marvel, invented by Dr. Willim Kolf in 1943, that has come a long way to recreate kidney function. Dialysis sustains the lives of millions of kidney patients every year. Dialysis is the "Gold Standard" for life-saving intervention while hopefully, they await the "Gift of Life". This time of relative "stability" must not be mistaken for "complacency", as it is well known that a certain % of dialysis patients die while waiting for a transplant. 


2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. A "friend" of mine (male) said he thought the picture of my fistula was "gory". I thought...'hmm. it's a daily reality for millions of dialysis patients...asshole'. But I didn't say anything at the time. Now that I think about it, I guess most womenfolk would not find it offensive at all. They see their blood every month so it's a totally natural thing.

      Delete