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I'm Benjy (Benjamin). I'm working as a medical social worker in a hospital. I'm twenty-nine
years old this year. I have a history of kidney failure; I had
it since I was fourteen years of age. So that makes it about fifteen years ago.
Subsequently I had a kidney transplant and things like that, so there were numerous times
where I was in the hospital when I wasn't well. Every time I go in for a surgery, then having
to be put under general anesthesia and you know you just close your eyes and there's this
kind of numbing kind of feeling and you're like... stuck in the middle between consciousness
and unconsciousness... I don't know whether that is what dying
could actually feel like. There are certain thoughts, strange, funny thoughts that would
go through your mind during that particular period of time, being very aware of how your
body is responding and things like that. So I would say that would be one kind of situation
where I felt that this is what death could feel like.
I had a transplant and then now I'm on medications everyday, but yeah I've recovered... well,
I'd like to think so. But I'm also realistic and I know that at
any point in time, stuff could happen. For example, like when I was in university, they
found out that I had a tumour in my lymph node below my jaw, so that was a bit of an up and
down kind of moment. Off and on they'd find funny stuff that happens
like water in the heart or whatever it is. I'm just thankful for every single day, basically,
that I could get up and go to bed like everybody else.