When you think toxic relationships, I bet you're thinking two people who drag each other down, right? Bad boy that a girl keeps running back to? Girl with some serious control issues? Leave it to Grey's Anatomy to show the world that's NOTHING on the most toxic relationship of all.
In a heartwrenching scene meant to show just how many facets there are to organ donation, a young man with cystic fibrosis showed up at Seattle Grace/Mercy West with his girlfriend on hand to lend support as his shoddy lungs were replaced with a fresh, healthy, pink pair. All looked fine and dandy, until the girlfriend started coughing uncontrollably, and the eagle-eyed surgeons spotted a prescription for a cystic fibrosis medicine in her bag.
Uh ohs! Girlfriend is a CF patient too (that's what the cystic fibrosis crowd calls it). Hey, it was bound to happen. About 30,000 children and adults in the United States have CF, a congenital (from birth) defect that causes the body to create an unusually thick mucus that clogs the lungs and can eventually render them useless.
So a guy with cystic fibrosis is dating a girl with cystic fibrosis, what gives, right? At least they have something in common. Apparently that is the problem.
Put two people with cystic fibrosis in a relationship, and you might as well be dooming them to death. Patients suffering from just about every disease under the sun are encouraged to find a support group and meet up with someone, but not folks with CF.
I remember this vaguely from the time a friend with CF celebrated her 40th birthday with a huge party -- considering only 40 percent of sufferers make it past age 18, 40 was a huge deal. She'd always connected with other CF patients online, and she was over the moon that her doctors had given her permission to meet her online friends in person. I was so happy for her I didn't really focus in on the details at the time, but Grey's Anatomy's docs put it right out on the table.
CF patients carry dangerous bacteria that won't hurt the general public. But it can kill another CF patient. So lung transplant boy could get his nice pink lungs and breathe like a champ one day, and be dead as a doornail the next simply because he couldn't keep his hands off his girlfriend. The way Dr. Altman saw it, it would be a waste of the lungs that could be put into a teenager with a long life to live or a young parent whose kids depended on her.
She was right. But she shined a whole new light on "toxic" relationships. Two people can be perfectly on the level with each other ... and still end up hurting one another.
Can you think of any other relationship with this special circumstance?
Image via ABC