THERE is said to be no subject on earth more entertaining (to the
narrator) than a major operation; and two operations, especially
if they fall close together, ought to be--for purposes of
self-entertainment--twice as good as one. Thus reckoning, it will
presently be seen that I have a decided advantage over those who have
to content themselves with only one, or none at all.
And it occurs to me that to write a book is the most considerate as
well as the most expeditious means of acquainting your friends with the
details of an operation or other painful experience; for in this way
you can expatiate at large on the most harrowing aspects of the case,
and everybody is at liberty to read as much or as little as he can
stand, and skip the rest; whereas if you get the listener’s ear he is
almost obliged to suffer attentively through to the end of your story.
Furthermore, in a book you can advertise your troubles far more widely
and effectively, and with less effort. Another advantage in writing
a book on some pet theme is that, like a filibusterer in the senate
chamber, you have the floor all to yourself: the difference being that
while his verbosity is wholly without interest or sense, either to
himself or his sleeping audience, your story is at least self-absorbing.
To go back to the origin of this story, it began with a
pain--intermittent at first, but soon becoming violent and continuous.
When it reached this stage I called in a physician, who pronounced it
a bad attack of something with a strange name, which being reduced to
simple English meant there was something wrong with my left kidney. He
gave me a hypodermic of morphine and two days later I developed a bad
case of septic pneumonia which, with resultant complications, laid me
low for eight weeks. While convalescing from this I wrote a book on
stock market speculation. I don’t know what prompted me to write such a
book at such a time, unless it was that something in the nearness of my
approach to the realms of the unknown reminded me of how near I came to
leaving the world unprotected against the pitfalls of Wall Street.
In due time I recovered from both the pneumonia and the book, but the
kidney was still belligerent, and about every six weeks, to quell its
savage attacks I had to take morphine and spend a few days in bed with
it. In the fall of that year while on a visit to my mother-in-law in
Minneapolis I was persuaded to take this refractory organ to the Mayo
Clinic at Rochester, Minnesota; and that sequestered little town, which
in the domain of operations, sickness and suffering occupies about the
same position as New York City does in the world of finance, provided
the setting for the semi-tragic episode herein related, in which for
many weeks I played the leading rôle before a mixed assemblage of
doctors, nurses and anxious relatives.
Fielding tells us that to prolong scenes of distress to an unwonted
degree is a task for which the reader feels but little indebted to the
author. Therefore since we have here to deal chiefly with grim-faced
facts such as are usually productive of more awe than amusement I
shall treat the whole catastrophe as lightly as the circumstances will
permit. But after all, a serious illness or an operation--like lion
hunting, stock market ventures and suchlike hazards--has its varied and
interesting phases; and many of its gloomy aspects are susceptible of
humorous interpretation when viewed in retrospect by those who survive
to tell the story.
In the present undertaking I was encouraged by the statement of both
Doctor “Will” Mayo and Doctor W. F. Braasch, that one of the most
difficult problems of the physician is to get the accurate viewpoint
of the patient. Not that the patient’s viewpoint seems to make any
difference, but they like to have it, possibly for the same reason
that the little boy liked to hear the stuttering man talk--because it
amused him. In order to get the reactions of a patient, Doctor Samuel
W. Lambert goes so far as to say: “I have often told my students that
every physician should have a severe illness, and every surgeon an
abdominal operation.” Possibly those who read this account will feel
themselves relieved from the need of trying out Doctor Lambert’s
recommendation--which might also have included nurses, though he may
have figured that they have other ways of kindling their sympathetic
emotions.