The Mother Ship in Everyday Ramblings

I took this yesterday morning with my phone. Sorry about the blur, it was a low light day full of glare. I was walking west across the new bridge and it is interesting to me that I had taken almost exactly the same shot a couple of weeks ago. This is the mother ship, Oregon Health & Science University.

I live in an area covered by trees up to the right. When I talk about walking up “the Hill” you can see it is a bit of a hike. The VA Hospital where Mr. Finch had his surgery and was treated is the light blue building off to the left up top. The Children’s Hospital in which I am about to stop volunteering is up top in the center, the white building with the two round structures on top. The Eye Institute is the white building below it. And the tall building to the right down front with the greenish glass is the Dental School where I will have all my work done early next year.

There are a couple of buildings you can’t see. The one where the office I work out of and the clinic building on the waterfront a couple of blocks to the left of the oddly shaped Collaborative Life Sciences building here down front with the incredibly fancy labs that we share with Portland State and Oregon State Universities.

All this, the whole thing, every building visible was built in the last 80 years.

And there is more to come.

Medicine is big business.

Anyway, I work, volunteer and get now all my medical care here, as I adored the eye doctor I saw last week and asked her if I could see her going forward. She told me something fascinating about my sister’s Macular Degeneration treatment.

Before my oldest sister was diagnosed with colon cancer she was diagnosed with Macular Degeneration. It was very scary because she was going blind. They started giving her aggressive treatments as she wasn’t even 70 yet. Shots directly into the eye. She was amazing and put up with this with great fortitude and determination because she so desperately wanted to be able to see.

What surprised us all was that then a year later just last year when her colon cancer was diagnosed and her care team had her on total nutrition via her IV port in her chest and chemo… her eyes got remarkably better. It was sort of astonishing. We all thought it was the nutrition, that she was finally getting balanced nutrition. She ate in an eccentric and uncertain way.

She told Kes her eyes were getting better because of the chemo.

Yeah, yeah. Well it turns out she was right!

The shots she was getting in her eyes were made up of a much milder version of the drugs they were infusing her with for the cancer.

Who knew?

My sister didn’t know enough medical terminology to explain it to us but this wonderful young professor of Ophthalmology was able to explain it to me.

I miss my sister today.

And you know what? That is perfectly okay. Some days I have trouble even grasping the concept that she is gone…

Last updated October 18, 2015