the dry run and the fashion show
last monday, the call came.
my dad, who has bounced up and down the waiting list for a year, was about to get a new liver. bags were packed, calls were made, and soon my father, mother and two of my brothers were headed down to madison. i met them at the hospital. my dad was nervous, and inbetween telling jokes he would admit that he was a little scared of what was to come. the medical history, the blood draws, take your shirt off and we'll check your pulse, my mom argues with my brother. she leaves the room, i follow, we walk to the cafeteria so she can get a cookie and some coffee. molasses, chocolate chip, and peanut butter. her phone rings, it's my brother. the surgery is cancelled.
last semester, i took a class on neuroethics. i gave a two hour presentation on brain death. it's a weird concept, a sort of limbo made possible by our technological advances of the past century. starting with the development of the iron lung we've been been able to maintain human bodies in gray zones between being "human" being "physiologically alive" and being "cellularly alive". the development of organ donation has made these distinctions relevant. no one wants to harvest organs from a living person, but at the same time maintaining consciousless bodies as simulacra of human beings, while real people die for lack of organs, seems grotesque. in an attempt to draw functional distinctions in this muddle, different definitions of "death" have been proposed. Whole brain death, brainstem death, and the controversal Pittsburg protocol (in which brain dead patients are given lethal doses of drugs in the operating room so that their organs can be harvested) have been tried. In my father's case, the donor was removed from the ventilator and the transplant team waited for him/her to stop breathing. it took the person 45 min to stop. by that time the donor's liver had begun to degrade and it was no longer usable. it doesn't happen very often (about 1-2 times per year at the UW Hospital), but it happened to my dad.
by the time the news went out, most of my dads brothers and sisters were already on the way to madison. so i had to hang out with my aunts and uncles for awhile. my dad comes from a large family, most of which is batshit crazy. one example...one of my roommates is a master's student african american studies. my racist uncle asked him if he studied jive. my dad tried to smooth it over by saying "oh are you asking if there is a language component to his studies?" but the damage was already done. the others aren't as bad, but they're all a little strange. so that was a fun week.
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on friday, nichole and i went to a fashion show for a local clothing store . the show took place at magnus, which i'd only been to a couple times. we ate tapas (oysters and cheese) and drank mojitos while we watched men and women strut around the stage in men's jeans. the place was packed with madison's equivalent of the beautiful people. the announcer kept bragging about the fact that they used "japanese denim, the most durable denim in the world!". the second half of the show was about "dirty denim" or a celebration of the fact that some people don't wash their pants. like for years. now i never wear denim, so i may be wrong on this, but that sounds pretty gross.
i'd buy some of their fancy pants jeans but, as noted, i never wear denim, japanese or otherwise. afterwords, we ran into skemper at a concert then we ate caramels and drank singapores at opus.
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my dad, who has bounced up and down the waiting list for a year, was about to get a new liver. bags were packed, calls were made, and soon my father, mother and two of my brothers were headed down to madison. i met them at the hospital. my dad was nervous, and inbetween telling jokes he would admit that he was a little scared of what was to come. the medical history, the blood draws, take your shirt off and we'll check your pulse, my mom argues with my brother. she leaves the room, i follow, we walk to the cafeteria so she can get a cookie and some coffee. molasses, chocolate chip, and peanut butter. her phone rings, it's my brother. the surgery is cancelled.
last semester, i took a class on neuroethics. i gave a two hour presentation on brain death. it's a weird concept, a sort of limbo made possible by our technological advances of the past century. starting with the development of the iron lung we've been been able to maintain human bodies in gray zones between being "human" being "physiologically alive" and being "cellularly alive". the development of organ donation has made these distinctions relevant. no one wants to harvest organs from a living person, but at the same time maintaining consciousless bodies as simulacra of human beings, while real people die for lack of organs, seems grotesque. in an attempt to draw functional distinctions in this muddle, different definitions of "death" have been proposed. Whole brain death, brainstem death, and the controversal Pittsburg protocol (in which brain dead patients are given lethal doses of drugs in the operating room so that their organs can be harvested) have been tried. In my father's case, the donor was removed from the ventilator and the transplant team waited for him/her to stop breathing. it took the person 45 min to stop. by that time the donor's liver had begun to degrade and it was no longer usable. it doesn't happen very often (about 1-2 times per year at the UW Hospital), but it happened to my dad.
by the time the news went out, most of my dads brothers and sisters were already on the way to madison. so i had to hang out with my aunts and uncles for awhile. my dad comes from a large family, most of which is batshit crazy. one example...one of my roommates is a master's student african american studies. my racist uncle asked him if he studied jive. my dad tried to smooth it over by saying "oh are you asking if there is a language component to his studies?" but the damage was already done. the others aren't as bad, but they're all a little strange. so that was a fun week.
****************************************************************************
on friday, nichole and i went to a fashion show for a local clothing store . the show took place at magnus, which i'd only been to a couple times. we ate tapas (oysters and cheese) and drank mojitos while we watched men and women strut around the stage in men's jeans. the place was packed with madison's equivalent of the beautiful people. the announcer kept bragging about the fact that they used "japanese denim, the most durable denim in the world!". the second half of the show was about "dirty denim" or a celebration of the fact that some people don't wash their pants. like for years. now i never wear denim, so i may be wrong on this, but that sounds pretty gross.
i'd buy some of their fancy pants jeans but, as noted, i never wear denim, japanese or otherwise. afterwords, we ran into skemper at a concert then we ate caramels and drank singapores at opus.
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