Clotting

"There is only Gina, come down from the Villa, / her outrageous umbrella striped like a medicine ball / for the balancing act of a poodle, / to toil in the clottings of fog and the world's / suppuration […]"

"An artificial kidney these days still means a refrigerator-sized dialysis machine. Such devices mimic[…]real kidneys[…]. But they are nothing like as efficient, and can cause bleeding, clotting and infection—not to mention inconvenience for patients, who typically need to be hooked up to one three times a week for hours at a time."