Apparently my sister was struck with appendicitis and had to go to the emergency room sometime last night. They performed a relatively routine appendectomy with no complications, and last I heard (which was about 2:30 AM last night) she's on a Morphine drip and more than a little out of it, but will be fine.

I've said it before, but this just reminds me how much respect I have for doctors, medicine, science, and the overall advancement of human knowledge. Appendicitis, of course, is 100% fatal (in an extremely horrible-way-to-go sense, no less) if untreated. If detected somewhere in the "oh God my abdomen is in the world's worst pain, to the hospital NOW" phase before the appendix actually bursts, treating it is an extremely routine procedure with no more risk than any other surgery. (There's always the possibility of sheer random bad luck in the form of a bad reaction to the anesthesia or something, etc., but that's about it.) They took something 100% life-threatening and turned it into the equivalent of having your wisdom teeth out.

My sister now literally owes her life to the fact that we as humans figured this stuff out.

Actually, if you want to go back farther than that, my sister and I were both extremely complicated labors that didn't go right at all, so my sister and my mom and I would all be dead if doctors hadn't known what they were doing. Twice.

Progress.

(In unrelated news, the fact that I can post this message on a website and have it instantly reach all of my friends--from the ones as close as living in the same apartment complex to the ones as far away as Wales--is pretty significant as far as human achievement, too.)