The Faithful Surgeon

After receiving my third skin graft on the right side of my head, I went to get all of the bandages removed. This time I wasn't in the fancy private hospital with the Scary Room where they do all of these things, I was at a Social Security Hospital where everyone is just crammed into the hallways, looking like the walking wounded after some terrible man-made event, waiting noisily for their turn. At the SS, the doctors are expected to see one patient every seven minutes, chop chop, they are not allowed the privacy or the time to be gentle and helpful as they are in the private hospital. I am a big baby at the hospital. By some strange coincidence the doctor I had had at the fancy private hospital was my surgeon at this SS hospital for this repair on my scalp. He was doing an internship on burn patients. I was very lucky because not only had he operated on me 23 times before, we had developed sort of a rather jolly relationship. As he went to remove the bandages I started to wail and as he grabbed a likely looking bit of tape and began to pull slowly I screamed all the louder with each and every pull. So he looked at my daughter Amber, shrugged in an expressive and soulful way, said “what the hell” and just went wrench! After a moment's shocked silence I screamed so loud that doctors and staff from all of the adjoining surgeries poured into the room to see what was the problem. My Doctor, Javier, just looked cool and said laconically “don't worry she is always like this” and they departed with strange looks and troubled thoughts about this new young doctor. He asked me if I had never had my legs waxed and I told him no, so he said I had now. After he finished the curing of my wounds he said to Amber and myself to be sure to say in a loud voice as we were leaving the office: “ Well! Isn't he the best doctor you have ever had, and so gentle?”.

We had lot of giggles together over the years. He was the surgeon that often used to hold my hand when I went to sleep on the operating table, remember 23 operations there, mostly with him in attendance and then four more times with him again at the state hospital before he had to return to his fancy practice at the other place. After one surgery I remember he came in and said “so that is how much you love me, as soon as you are asleep you let go of my hand” At the beginning of the next operation when they were just about to put me to sleep he held my hand as usual but this time I brought out a tube of Super Glue and said that this time I wouldn't let go. The whole thing was very funny, gallows’s humor perhaps, obviously I couldn't use the glue – he needed his hands for operating but we all had a good laugh.