Hello, dear readers. If there are any, I do wonder if there are any Ducks out there who are happy to see my column specifically every two weeks, but I digress. Like it or not, I am published. I, for one, don’t happen to like it as I am writing this. I am tired, and I have no particularly inspiring ideas, but the show must go on. Perhaps one of my greatest strengths is recognizing my own shortcomings. I might not be able to dunk, so at least I don’t try to eat shit (at least not since I played one-on-one with my friend Malik on a lowered rim about 10 years ago). I swear what I just mentioned will make sense in a moment. Ya dee ya, I knew I could not come up with a good idea for a manner of mechanism today, so I asked my dear friend Aidan for an idea. He, in all of his infinite wisdom, without prompting, replied: catheters.
Funnily enough, I have a fair amount of experience with catheters. I have had a multitude of issues with my urinary system since birth. Ding me (or posterize my ass) the wrong way on my left flank, and I will pee blood. I have had more ultrasounds than most people with less than four kids will have during the course of their pregnancies. I have also had a urinary catheter. Speaking from experience, the urinary ones SUCK. Theoretically, they’re supposed to make peeing easier, but I don’t think the sensation of hellfire localized entirely to my nether region every time I peed exactly helped. With all that being said, they are important medical tools. Despite the pain they put me through, they did what they were intended to do.
So, what exactly are catheters meant to do? Broadly speaking, catheters are meant to help deliver fluids into or out of the body. They could be used for the urinary system, the respiratory system, and the heart. Basically, anywhere there is a hole, you can put a catheter in it. They are long, flexible tubes that can help compromised organs still move fluids or solids through the body. They can also be used to deliver medicine or drugs to the body. A somewhat related technology, which I have also had the pleasure of becoming, erm, acquainted with, is the stent. While catheters are more passive and tend to just sit in lumens (think veins, arteries, or generally tubes), stents provide structural support. For example, if one has a kidney stone or constricted blood vessels, stents can be inserted inside the channels, where they are then expanded to open up the vessel. Catheters and stents can both be short- and long-term treatments. In my case, I had constricted ureter pee tubes coming from my bladder, so I had a stent inserted to expand them that was eventually removed.
This is usually the point in my articles where I transition to some philosophical take on the topic. Honestly, there is not a whole lot I can do with this at first glance. As usual, I’ll try my best. Frankly, shit doesn’t always work the way it is supposed to. This column is all about how things work, but I have often failed to mention why, how, or what the repercussions are when technologies don’t work. Perhaps it is more important to understand how to keep things working than it is to know how they got started in the first place, even if knowledge of one usually necessitates the other. Catheters and stents don’t exist to do anything in and of themselves. They exist to fix shit. I think we all should be a little bit more like catheters and stents, fixing the world one hole at a time.
