Sep 25, 2003
You will have heard about the poor fellow who got separated from his companion in the middle of the Sahara, and was set upon by wandering Tuaregs or whatever. When his friend found him again he had had his bowels removed and replaced with hot sand and salt and he seemed to be in poor shape. However when his friend remarked that the pain must indeed be terrible, he replied “Only when I laugh”.
After Terry left the Air Force he had a job with a n aerial topdressing business run by his brother-in-law. Lifting sacks of fertiliser eventually gave him a hernia. That involved some surgery and stitching up in the hospital at Gisborne. He was on his way home in a taxi when something must have amused him, and his subsequent mirth pulled the stitches out. This was a cause of some consternation, for the taxi driver as well as for Terry, but unlike the man in the desert he was in a position to take remedial action and make an abrupt return to the hospital.
There he was assigned to the same surgeon who had dealt with him before. The surgeon was rather embarrassed by what had occurred, but he sewed him up again with considerably greater thoroughness, and was in the end quite proud of the job he had been able to make of it. In fact, he used Terry’s abdomen as a demonstration of surgical technique during a routine tour of the wards with a gaggle of interns that very afternoon. “There”, he said, displaying his handiwork, “After skillful surgery of this kind, healing is very much facilitated, .and can be very rapid. This young fellow will be up and about in a couple of days, and will soon be able to carry on with his normal duties, just as before.”. “That, after all, is what we’re here for; to return patients to their normal lives as quickly as possible.”
Terry appreciated this, particularly in the light of his recent experience, but began to feel that he was being displayed in a rather impersonal manner, more as an object of study than as a living, breathing, sentient human being. So, to let the assembled group know he was still there, he looked up eagerly at the surgeon and asked, “ Do you think I’ll be able to play the piano?”
“Why, certainly”, said the surgeon, recovering quickly from the initial affront that he felt at a mere patient presuming to participate in the lesson, and switching deftly into his celebrated bedside manner. “I’m sure there won’t be any problem about that Old Man. No problem at all.”
“Oh good!” said Terry. “I’ve always wanted to be able to play the piano.”
The surgeon was not one of those who joined in the guffaws that followed.