Renewal
October 1. I have been anticipating this month for some time, because it is the month when I need to travel for surgery. I will stay over and come back the next day. It will be a memorable 4 hrs+ train ride with my older son. It will be a time of renewal.
I feel so blessed to live in this time when I. can somehow be a beneficiary of the efforts by so many people to repair and renew the human body. It is a gift that many people before me gave to me, without knowing who I would be. It was selfless curiosity for the human being and the humanity within who wanted to live a better life.
I think today of Dr. Lei, who has been a dedicated medical doctor for decades in various countries, dedicating his mind and talents to restore others. Dr. Lei probably began thinking about his life ahead and what he wanted to do. I am grateful that he made that decision, which is going to benefit me this month. He did that without knowing me, without knowing my boys. Dr. Lei has met both of my boys and in particular noted that I bring my younger boy everywhere. I am happy that my boys can meet Dr. Lei, and appreciate how he handles himself and how important what he is doing for me is for us. We are so blessed.
I am looking forward to the train ride with my older boy. I will need to wait for him after class on a Monday. We will then make our way to the train station and onto adventure. I have many pages of instructions and prescriptions in preparation for the procedure. I also preordered salads for the train ride. I hope that my son gets to appreciate the city where we are going. I was there decades ago as my first postdoctoral post. After work, I hung out at the comedy club and the pub, where line dancing was the main feature. Decades later, I am to return to the same town where I will be restored. When I lived there, Dr. Lei was likely being educated in the craft that will help me. I was, at the time, doing what I thought was cool stuff, but I don't think that I thought of who would benefit. I think that as an engineer, I focused on stuff that performed actions to help people be more efficient and effective. Engineers make an oath of duty to society. But, I don't think that I ever thought much about the individual beneficiary of my work. It was just my curiosity for learning science and applying some of it to build fun stuff; and perhaps my arrogance of doing something that others hadn't done before me.
It was interesting and rewarding to engineer things to help repair and upgrade people. I worked on various medical research and development opportunities over the years, with a medical research centre and various other people, and got to visit the Watson Labs and say hello to Big Blue. That was cool. But what Dr. Lei and many doctors do is magic. Arthur C. Clark once declared that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I have known this since childhood as "Clark's Third Law," which I encountered in the words Carl Sagan, in particular. I am going to be the beneficiary of magic to restore part of me.
May God bless doctors, nurses, staff, and volunteers that participate in the repair, upgrade, and maintenance of people. May God guide them and in particular, may God guide the hands of the surgeon, Dr. Lei, and his team of generous and courageous people, who have decided to dedicate their life to helping others.
May God bless my community of angels, who has supported me for this procedure to take place. Thank you for helping me, and in particular, thank you to all the anonymous angels. Thank you all who have helped investigate the functioning of the human body and who have studied to renew it.
