atropos cascade

"think of it this way. Everyone has an invisible anvil over their head. It weighs as much as you do initially then after the age of 16, you add one kg for every year you grow older. It has 100 ropes that suspend it above your head and for every year after the age of 16 one string gets cut or withers away. These represent your body's healthiness and physical reserve. The heavier the anvil gets the harder it is for the ropes to prevent it from falling. The fewer ropes there are, the more likely the anvil is to fall. It could all snap at once and fall and crush you in an instant, or it could lower gradually crushing you by degrees, first you feel a pressure on your head, then find you can't lift your head up any more, then you're bent over by an immense weight you can't seem to fight, eventually you are crawling and if the anvil doesn't fall completely it pins you to the floor absolutely until even your lungs are unable to expand. This is just a metaphor mind you. Risk factors: Everything you do to harm your body, adds weight to the anvil and subtracts from your ropes. Smoker for 60 years? add 60 kg to the anvil. Sunbathing without sunscreen for 10 years, add 10 years to your anvil and subtract 10 ropes.

Eventually everyone gets crushed. Some go suddenly, some go gradually. We can't predict the ones who go suddenly, but by counting the ropes and weighing your anvil, we can guess who it might happen to. If you have this condition and these risk factors, chances are you'll go downhill rapidly. If you have this many ropes and an anvil that weighs this much, it'll snap pretty soon - or not. That's all it is - an educated guess. We can't predict the future. We can only gauge the tension and calibre of the fibre and estimate how many ropes you have left. We can't tell you how many years or hours. We can do things in the short term that prop the anvil up somewhat - stenting, surgery, slipshod makeshift ways of strengthening ropes that are on the verge of breaking. We've gotten very good at recognising where the ropes are weak and how to fix them. But we can't make them unbreakable, and we can't add ropes, and we can't make the anvil any lighter. Every year you will still lose one.

Now imagine the invisible anvil analogy, but this time there's one hanging over each and every one of your organs. Your brain. Your kidneys. Your heart. Your liver. Your skin. Your gut. And how your body requires all of them to be working in tandem to survive. How your survival depends on the miracle of them all communicating and cooperating and operating exactly as planned. Your organs are the ropes that suspend the grand anvil over the thing you call yourself. Once they start failing, it's only a matter of time."