Until the last month or so I hadn’t been sick for several years. Well, I hadn’t been sicker, to be more precise. With kidney failure I’m always sick. That semi-wellness run ended abruptly with a nasty cold that escalated to pneumonia. Hence the lack of work here for a while. As the Chinese know, the kidneys are directly connected to the lungs.
Last fall the DaVita Saint Paul dialysis center computerized the patients’ flow sheets. As a result, where a good six feet used to separate the chairs, now sometimes less than 18 inches—and never more than 30 inches—separates me from the closest patient. Computers, after all, must be accommodated.
As soon as I saw the new arrangement I knew I’d get sick. I knew it and that probably caused it, but sick I got.
Studies of mortality and morbidity in dialysis patients abound, but none that I know of about simple things like how moving chairs farther apart—at the expense of computer placement—reduces instances of illness.
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