Everything Under the Sun

Thirteen. Unlucky for most, but lucky for me. The number of times I've seen someone bleed. Only in my mind when I have imagined, The contributions of strangers, hard to fathom. Hard to fathom, the volume of compassion.  Gathered from bodies of individuals that matter. A uniquely human cycle, no other I’d rather,  One day a contributor, the next a benefactor. Giving the gift of life, celebrated every day thereafter. Thirteen, The number of times I will bleed, To return what's not rightfully me. To people in a world full of a need.

Rarity is interesting. It is unsparing and unprecedented. If something is rare, then the patterns of logical reasoning we do in our brains to predict future outcomes are not comforting. We can't trust them. So then, if someone begins to present with uncommon circumstances multiple times to the point where it becomes statistically rare, how can they predict their own future at all? And if it's related to their mortality, how can they put themselves to sleep at night... In the US its estimated that 907,000 people have Ulcerative Colitis. Of patients that are diagnosed with UC, around 4% present symptoms before age 5. That's 36,280 people. Typically, 25-40% of patients with UC end up needing to have their large intestine removed. If you take an average of 32.5% of patients and apply it to the 36,280 that we got earlier, you get 11,791 people in the US that will be diagnosed around 5 years old and then subsequently have the surgery. In what we could refer to as very uncommon,...