The Bionic Salesman
Hainan, China
The kidneys are remarkable organs. They filter the entire body’s blood 60 times a day. Over an average lifetime, they filter more than a million litres of blood, breaking down proteins and carefully draining out the bad stuff and leaving the good stuff.
They are pieces of precision engineering that function so perfectly most of the time that most people just take them for granted. Nobody ever thinks of themselves as being a kidney success, and most people have no real idea what would happen to you if your kidneys stopped working.
A few months ago, I failed comprehensively at kidneys. I lost a war of attrition, over several decades, with an auto-immune disease. Mine are the kidneys that failed their exams repeatedly, dropped out of remedial class and now spend their days kicking cans and smoking fagbutts in the alley behind the supermarket.
And I can now tell you exactly what happens to you when your kidneys fail.
You wake up one morning and discover that you’ve become Holland. Suddenly, your body is below sea level. It’s all silt, marshland and brackish water. Every day is a land-reclamation project. And dialysis machines are just hi-tech windmills. Mine, called Baxter, cheerfully bails me out each night and wakes me with a beep.
Having become Holland, I’ve decided that there is only one thing to do. I’m going to pack up my windmill in an enormous suitcase and go on an adventure, starting with a road trip around Thailand in January, 2011, to promote the country launch of the Waboba Ball. And for the adventure after that, my wife and I will be building a courtyard house in Lijiang, Yunnan, where we’ve bought a piece of land.
I’m doing this because I have seen the alternative. Spending time in hospitals teaches you a thing or two about human nature, and I’ve learned that the will is elastic. It bounces back and bounces back until it reaches its elastic limit.
Then it doesn’t bounce back any more.
The hospital wards that I’ve seen are full of people who have surrendered to the idea that they are good for nothing but wearing pyjamas and looking wistfully out of windows. But that’s not for me. I’m having too much fun. Let the adventures begin.
