Acceptance?

As usual, IMU students have to visit the dialysis centre during their Renal system. I went for my visit last Wednesday to the centre in Hang Lekiu. This centre in Jalan Hang Lekiu is run by NKF (National Kidney Foundation) and gives subsidized treatment to the patients.

Patients with chronic renal failure MUST go for dialysis treatments 3 times a week, 4 hours each time, for the rest of their lives. It's not much of a convenience to sit down for 4 hours each time, having 2 needles 4cm wide poked into you while the machine hums. All your blood goes out to a machine and comes in again. Patients with crf also have to take medication and go for blood tests every month. Plus, they develop a lot of complications like infections, bone disorders, anemia, and embolisms. And...they have to go for operations to harvest ateriovenous fistulas, plus, have unsightly bumps on hands due to the high pressure of blood flowing in and out. Patients have to control their diet and water intake (cannot take more than 500ml water a day, what if you suddenly get very very thirsty and "exceed" your limit of water for the day?). CRF is not curable and patients are "doomed" to dialysis for life unless someone is willing to donate a kidney for transplant. Imagine, one cannot go for holidays, or even drink higher amounts of water and get stuck to a machine 4 hours a day for 3 days a week!

Ok, I'm not here to give a lecture on chronic renal failure. But being the pessimist that I am and the person plagued with depressiveness, I wonder what gives these patients the will to live on?

I saw an elderly Indian man, blind (because of diabetes complications), on dialysis and in a wheelchair unable to walk, and wonder, if I were in that position, won't I prefer to die?
Indeed, as my father said, some patients prefer to die than to be restricted 10, 15 years to a machine until they die.

As the sister was showing us around the centre, she remarked that people often wonder why patients were happy patients, considering they had renal failure. The answer, they accept the position they are in. To these patients, this is just another routine in their lives and they accept that they have to be dependent on dialysis. And she continued to say that educated patients have a harder time coping with the diagnosis of renal failure because they can't accept the limitations and inconveniences of being on dialysis.

It struck me because I chronically struggle to accept circumstances. In some ways it's positive as we must never become to complacent with life or accept our weaknesses without the motivation to change. Yet, at times, God just wants us to accept the circumstances of our lives and depend on Him to go on. Which is a struggle for me, for I always refuse to accept "bad things" and try to "fix" circumstances. So I am leaning to accept that while I may not always know the answers to complexities it does not challenge His sovereignty. Neither when I don't see His power displayed, is His power negated.

Lord, give me the courage to change the things I can,
The serenity to accept the things I cannot,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Of course, it's moments of experiencing humanity; grieving in heart but with sprinkles of hope in relating to patients, that makes all the exams, books, humiliation, self doubt and perplexities of being a medical student worth its while.