While most people have a tremendous amount of rightful anxiety about the COVID-19 crisis, I’ve had firsthand experience with how modern medical technology, natural human resiliency, and willpower can overcome unimaginable obstacles.
In 2012, my wife went into liver failure after a long battle with hepatitis-C (acquired from a life-saving blood transfusion in 1977, before adequate testing of the blood supply was commonplace). She was on death’s door through 36 emergency hospitalizations for liver and related opportunistic illnesses — including pneumonia, peritonitis, gastritis, colitis, C-Diff, and more.
Every time, she prevailed. Her will to live, her body’s natural healing abilities, and the miracle of modern medicine pulled her back from the brink, and a live-liver transplant gave her a new lease on life. Then, the year after the operation, new medication eliminated that nasty virus from her system once and for all.
Citizens around the world are coming together, collaborating, and doing what’s needed to “flatten the curve.” Our collective will — and the incredible power of modern science — are now focused on maximizing our natural healing abilities, creating new medical technology, and delivering the tests, equipment, and treatments that will allow millions to overcome this scourge.
Corona’s deadly impact is horrible. But, humanity’s shared experience is now forging lessons that will leave us all appreciating how lucky we are to be alive, and how — united in a common cause — our willpower, intellects, and technology can overpower any obstacle.
- Ron Kamen is a clean energy consultant who lives with his wife in their empty nest in Rhinebeck, New York. Although they never conceived a biological child together in their blended family of 7 kids, they “had a liver together” (Ron gave her half of his — both parts grew back in 3 months.)
- Find out about the amazing life-saving work of live liver transplants: https://weillcornell.org/center-for-liver-disease-and-transplantation)