Please note: If you read yesterday’s journal post, it turned out that I was overly dramatic in my writing. I went through the procedure without a hitch yesterday. I am extremely grateful for my wife who was with me throughout the day; our son, who rose very early, accompanied us, drove us home, and supported both of us; our daughter who kept in touch by text message and sent her love and prayers; friends, colleagues, and family who prayed, supported and sent best wishes; a very competent and professional electrophysicist/cardiologiest and the entire cardiac care team at University of Washington Northwestern Hospital. I experienced no pain and was discharged in time to grab lunch on the way home and spend the evening at home resting. All is well.

And now for a rather neat segue, if I do say so myself:

Part of he preparation for the procedure was that I was to have nothing to eat or drink during the 12 hours prior to the procedure except for a small sip of water to take a couple of very small pills. Normally I have easily accessible veins. I was a regular blood donor for many years and there is a bit of scar tissue that shows right where my vein lies on the left side of my body. However, after 12 hours with no water consumption, I was slightly dehydrated when I arrived at the hospital. When the nurse came to insert the IV for the procedure, she had trouble locating the vein in my arm. What used to happen in such a situation is that the nurse would make an educated guess and when the needle failed to hit the right space, would probe slightly, a process that hurts quite a bit. However, yesterday, the nurse summoned an infusion specialist who arrived with a very neat ultrasound machine with a small sensor who used the machine to map the vein beneath the skin, make a single poke and insert the catheter perfectly. It was a fascinating process with only a very slight amount of temporary pain.

When the human body suffers from a lack of hydration, it undergoes all kinds of changes including the shrinking of blood vessels to aid in circulation of a slightly decreased blood supply and to protect vessels from injury. Other living things, such as plants, also react dramatically to a lack of water.

Recently a United Nations report warned of a looming global water crisis and an “immanent risk” of shortages due to overconsumption and climate change. The impact of drought in several areas of he world has already led to water shortages, decreased agricultural production, prolonged battles over water rights, and a large amount of suffering. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said water, "humanity's lifeblood", is being drained by "unsustainable water use, pollution and unchecked global warming.” Richard Connor, the lead author of the report, said that about 10% of the global population “currently lives in areas that are [experiencing] high or critical water stress.” The report goes on to state that global warming will increase seasonal water shortages around the world in both areas that currently have abundant water and those already strained.

It is a very serious report, and one not to be taken lightly. As I noted, the lack of water can do some very strange things to human bodies. However, the writers of the report did, at least at one point, become at least as overly dramatic with their use of language as I was when I wrote yesterday’s journal entry. It says that the world is “blindly traveling a dangerous path” of “vampiric over consumption and overdevelopment.” Wow! Vampiric!

According to Wiktionary, the definition of vampiric is an adjective which means “having the traits of a vampire.” So, I guess, according to the UN report, the world’s looming water crisis is like a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the vital essence of the living. I guess that it means that the crisis is of mythical proportions.

I’m a theologian. I’ve been called to interpret myth from time to time. But I confess I’m having trouble seeing how the reference to a mythical creature in the context of a serious report of a looming global crisis is helpful. This isn’t make believe, folks. It isn’t pretend. Real people are dying for a lack of water. More will die in the years to come. The direct result of the overconsumption of water can be catastrophic. We have already seen the near draining of Lakes Mead and Powell in the American Southwest due, in part, to the thirst for green golf courses in places where overpopulation already threatens fragile environments. Similar drought conditions have drained reservoirs all around the world, from Morocco to Afghanistan, from Angola to Brazil, from Burkina Faso to Chile, and in many other areas of the world. An estimated 55 million people are already directly affected by droughts every year according to the World Health Organization. Droughts are the most serious threat to livestock and crops worldwide. Water scarcity impacts 40 percent of the world’s population. About 700 million people are at risk of being displaced due to drought by 2030. If you know anything about immigration and the world’s current refugee crisis, you can imagine how devastating it will be to add 700 million more displaced people over the next 7 years.

All of the fancy ultrasound machines in all of the luxurious speciality hospitals of the world will be insufficient to respond to this crisis. We can all help simply by reducing our consumption of this precious fluid. Inspired by what seemed to me to be excessive whining by a certain group of politicians led by one very visible individual prone to irrational rants about toilets, we recently had a low-water, dual flush toilet installed in our house. It works beautifully and it is very satisfying to hear the short flush and very short water run to refill the tank. It is just one small thing we’ve done to reduce our consumption of water. There are many, many more things we can do. The first thing is to raise our awareness.

I guess one step in the process was to have a UN report send me to my dictionaries by using the world “vampiric.”