We went through this situation a few weeks ago where my wife had a serious infection that she was dealing with. A staph infection created an absess under her skin that then developed a secondary infection and became quite dangerous. As the sickness quickly progressed we took the necessary steps to keep her safe. Protocol says that you open up an absess like this and drain it--keeping it open until the infection is gone and the absess is healed. We had a doctor in PAP do this for us.
I knew what to expect when Jen (the amazing doctor that did this procedure for us) drained the absess. We've dealt with boils before in our home. They are painful and full of puss. We've had them explode when lanced, splattering the walls or the face of the closest person. And this was the most serious boil we had encoutered yet. Lucky for Gwenn, the pain was managed with narcotics. Lucky for the rest of us, there was very little puss.
Now puss, technically, is dead white blood cells. They are part of our immune system. These cells attack the infection and sacrifice themselves for the overall health of our body. So puss is not a sign of infection. Rather, it is a sign of our body fighting infection.
"There is very little puss," Jen remarked, "but lots of space for it to collect." There was an infection, but Gwenn's body wasn't fighting it. As if, facing fourth and short, Gwenn's body had decided to punt. Or even better, facing third and long had decided to quick-kick. As if saying "I know we won't get the first down, so we might as well kick it while they aren't expecting it."
This explained why the infection was spreading so quickly: Because Gwenn's body wasn't fighting back against it. But why wasn't it? Because of connections. Because nothing runs independantly of everything else.
The few weeks preceding this medical emergency had been particularly stressful. More so than normal. I had been in the states for three weeks. Gwenn had been on her own dealing with the family, the organization, the day to day issues and the fires that needed to be put out. And the psychological stressors had such a great physical affect, that her body didn't have the ability (desire?) to fight off an infection that it had fought off many times in the past. This wasn't a conscious decision in any way. It's just the way our body works.
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