LANA The US Army — accidentally provided a major part of the ‘cave dialysis’ solution. Blood transfusion kits are not available at the local CVS, so even after getting the tubes, needles, pump, and bandages that seem to be required to make this work, you need someone that knows how a non-hospital transfusion setup would function. And would trust it enough to try it out. On themselves. That person was Lana: a combat medic for the US Army discharged about a decade ago. And now homeless. Our country has a serious problem with taking care of people we put in harm’s way after we are ‘done’ with their service. Lana would sporadically visit my clinic instead of the VA (or nothing at all I assume), and I started driving her home shortly after she showed up. She happened to arrive very late, so I was always done for the day at about the same time as she was. During the drives I started bringing up her in-field medical activities. Recounting this was traumatic for her, but I believe it was also cathartic, and she did it because she wanted to and not because I influenced her. Over the next couple weeks, I learned she had done many field blood transfusions and although not thrilled by them, was certainly comfortable with them. Venipuncture (putting a needle into a vein) and cannulation (creating a ‘canal’ for the blood to flow through) are simply skills with a high-degree of risk associated with them. Lana was good at them from a war-time of experience. In theory I should have been good also, but that was both not true and irrelevant. Not true because I never had to do it myself and had not picked up the skill. And irrelevant because Lana had to trust the process, and she was always going to trust herself as a skilled medic than almost anyone else.
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