Thoughts on Coming Round After Being Under the Knife

My dear wife Britt was in the hospital recently having her appendix removed. She arrived there at 8am, and was home by 4pm. I seem to remember that years ago this operation took quite a bit longer, and certainly involved - let’s be blunt here as far as scalpel usage goes - a great deal more cutting. While the surgeon was not able to remove the appendix by cyber means alone, there is no doubt that increased technology played a very large part in both speeding up the process and minimising invasive surgery.

She was unconscious for no more than two or three hours, but long enough to remind me of a time when my father was unconscious in hospital following a very serious car accident in 1972. He was in a coma for over four weeks. While waiting for the promised phone call from the doctor operating on Britt that would - hopefully - inform me of the completion of a successful operation, I recalled a letter that my dad had written to the hospital that had treated him those fifty years ago. It had been a remarkable letter that I had come across in one of the many boxes of papers, photos and family ephemera I inherited when my mother died earlier this century, and I determined to dig it out when I returned home

Happily, my old-fashioned filing system, folders kept in an old fashion wooden filing cabinet, seems to function far better than my filing on the computer where I have trouble finding anything. 

There, in that old cabinet, in a large green folder marked ‘Correspondence’ were many light brown folders, each diligently labeled. The one marked ‘Postcards’ was full of cards received from friends and relatives over many years, the one marked ‘Personal’ contained letters, typed and handwritten, from old pals around the world, and in the one marked ‘Dad’s accident’, I found the original letter. Well, to be completely accurate, the original carbon copy of the original letter. 

We so often hear of those unfortunates in comas, lying silently, motionless in hospital beds, literally comatose, possibly in a vegetative state, and we wonder what, if anything, might be going through their minds. And usually, we never find out.

Fortunately, Dad did recover and was able to recall some of it, and wrote it down I found his account fascinating reading … 

And so did his Doctor …

Well, there it is. An artefact from over fifty years ago, a very real artefact that were it to have been sent as an email - if of course email had existed all that time ago - would in all likelihood not exist artefact-wise today… The computer gives us a very present means of keeping in touch but leaves the past in a rapidly disintegrating blur … 

Which is, perhaps, just as well, as it is the present in which we have to live.

Anyway, all of this is a way of saying that one thing leads to another, and Britt’s appendix led to all these appendices, and so to an appreciation of the written word - written on flimsy paper - which is nevertheless a darn sight more of a durable record than the cyber version. 

And more than anything else, it leads to a humble but heartfelt appreciation of the skills of the medical profession. Blessings upon you good folks - long may you practice and prosper.