Madness string 105868

Random mermaid
Medicine has gotten too good at keeping people alive. Kids would sit for months and months connected to CRRT (dialysis) and ECMO (heart/lung machine) literally wasting away before ultimately dying. And when they die they don't resemble anything like a kid. They look like puffy little aliens who sometimes have lost the perfusion to their hands and feet so now they're dead and black. It's horrific and I can't imagine putting a child through that. I also cannot imagine spending my days sitting in a hospital room watching that happen to my child.

You accumulate experience and wisdom and pain and one day, someone tells you that you seem to have it all figured out and you go 'Oh. I didn't realise. When did this happen?'