Thursday, April 15, 2010

Not About Tax Day

So, it's tax day. We filed our taxes a couple of weeks ago, and have already received our federal refund. This is big for us because we (my wife and I) are procrastinators. But enough about that...

Took the day off work and went with my wife to UCSF. We had been invited to have lunch with her doctor and get to see some of the facilities where they are doing amazing research. Everybody has their thing that they donate to, their own personal cause. For us, it's vision research. We donate to That Man May See.

You could go to their website and maybe learn a thing or two, but it doesn't do the people there any justice. We are grateful to the wonderful doctors and researchers at UCSF, in particular the ones working in the Ophthalmology Department. They not only treat patients, and my wife has been a patient there for about seven years now, but they do research that leads to better treatments that one day will benefit patients. The clinician-researchers do work that... well, it practically leaves me speechless.

My heart appreciates all they have done for my wife. My head appreciates all the geeky science that they are doing. And my wife's doctor is one of these clinician-researchers. He works in the clinic and treats patients, but he also does research, working on things that he hopes one day to bring to the clinical trial stage, where it's actually being tested on, and benefiting, people. My wife is one of those people. She was helped immensely from a clinical trial, and has continued to do well with the treatments she has received since that time.

I genuinely hope that the work that President Obama is doing to bring health care to all U.S. citizens is just the first step. There are many things wrong with health care in this country. But today, I'm not going to gripe about taxes, or the government, or both. Instead, today, I'm going to be grateful for when health care does work. I've seen it first hand. And I saw other people today, other patients, who have also been helped and who are grateful.

It was a good day.

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