“How do I get to that street,” she demanded, pointing to the next street over. The streets in Charleston are laid out in a grid, so I wasn’t sure what to say other than, “Well, uh… you just walk either direction until you get to a street that lets you turn that way.”

“I gotta walk that far?!” she demanded incredulously. “My ankle just got smashed by a four-wheeler helping my boyfriend get my drink on!”

She was walking just fine, so I wasn’t sure if her boyfriend had smashed her ankle while she was drinking on a four-wheeler, or if a four-wheeler that was helping her boyfriend had smashed her ankle in the process, or perhaps the four-wheeler itself was drinking.

Anyway, I wasn’t going to carry her, so it seemed like walking was her only option.

“Well, the nearest side street is probably that direction,” I said, pointing, while I resumed my walk the other way.

“You’re a good Samaritan,” she yelled after me. “Don’t get sunburnt!”

I gave her an appreciative, though probably strained smile, and kept walking.

Since then, I’ve wondered if she found what she was looking for. I’m sure it wasn’t the next street over or “getting her drink on.” I think she just wanted someone to talk to for a moment, though I didn’t make myself available.

So either this is the strangest blog to ever grace the website of a medical company, or I’m going somewhere unusually important.

You see, I’ve run into this a lot recently, at tradeshows, conferences, hospitals, and sidewalks. People just looking for random human interaction. We exist for human connection. We live, love and die, and most of the wonderful and difficult decisions we make are about human connection: who we marry, whether or not we have kids, the daily work we do to build a life and provide for those we love. If you’re reading this blog, then you’ve probably chosen a medical career, which means you spend your days like we do, trying to save people from dying or being hurt.

We do that because, as clinicians—and human beings—we understand the value of other human beings. Perhaps we don’t know the patient on the bed well enough to value them fully, but someone does. That’s why I’m writing this blog. That’s why my job exists. Transonic flow probes have been used many times to prompt clip revision during aneurysm surgery. Without that revision, the patient might have died. CABG grafts all over the world have been revised to keep the patient alive and well because of a single measurement that we provided.

Whether you work in CABG, hemodialysis, ECMO, transplant, or cerebrovascular surgery, please, take a look at what we offer to help you save lives.

If you don’t, I might never have a sidewalk-talk with a woman who was run over by a drunken four-wheeler again!

Thanks for reading,

               Transonic Systems, Inc

                              The Measure of Better Results