Trading Medical Devices Like Pokémon Cards

As I sat in the hospital waiting room, nervously sipping bad coffee while my husband was in surgery, my best friend sat beside me and asked, with total sincerity:“Do you need our walker? What about the donut for the toilet? Ooh—and we’ve got crutches, too, but I don’t think you’ll need those…”

Moments later, another friend called to offer her inventory:“Hey, I’ve got a leg brace, a cane with flames on it, and one of those grabber things. Need anything? Oh—and can I borrow your grabber it’s longer than mine? My knee surgery’s next week.”

And that’s when it hit me.

We’ve officially reached the stage of life where we’re trading medical equipment like Pokémon cards.

“I’ll swap you a shower chair and a heating pad for that reacher stick.”“Only if it’s the deluxe grabber with the magnet tip!”“No deal—unless you throw in the extra gel packs.”

Forget handbags and heels—we’re rocking bath benches and orthopedic pillows. Somewhere in a drawer, I’m pretty sure I have a sling, a finger splint, and a boot I wore once and kept just in case.

And you know what? There’s a weird kind of comfort in it. We’ve become a lending library of healing, propping each other up—sometimes literally. Our medical junk drawers are like survival kits from the trenches of aging.

We may not catch ‘em all, but we sure know where to borrow them.