A Visit To The Doctor

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“Your biopsy is negative for cancer”

“Huh?”

In a day surgery last week my wife gave up one of her four parathyroids. She didn’t need it. Yesterday while she was waiting to see the doctor for a follow up, a nurse passed by and cheerily said, “Negative for cancer.” What makes this a notable event was not the great relief she felt, but the surprise, or even shock that there was any suspicion of cancer. The misbehaving parathyroid was excised because it was causing her to lose bone density. No one had mentioned anything about cancer. We celebrated last night with a glass of sparkling apple juice. That seemed about right.

The parathyroidectomy got me thinking about losing body parts, how common it is, how many we seem able to do without. In a way you can think of life as a process of bodily erosion. It starts in infancy with your toe and finger nails. Before long somebody is cutting off your hair. (If you cut off half an inch of hair a month and live for 80 years you will have grown and cut off 12 times 40 inches or 40 feet.) Of course your skin has been shedding from the get go, long before you have to pay someone to take it off by the piece. You can lose a digit or even a larger extremity and still carry on. We’re told that one of the kidneys is superfluous. Take that. Teeth, tonsils, gall bladder, spleen, cellulose, appendix. Where does it stop? Apparently somewhere beyond breasts, lymph nodes, and uterus. I venture guys could get by after a nipplectomy. There are four parathyroids. You need only about half of one to survive.

Opps. This is now my second revision or third attempt to get it right. I'm stunned at how wrong is the third sentence of the previous paragraph. The removal process actually starts on about day three with your foreskin, or apparently in some places the labia major. I'm not quite sure about this. Also sometimes taken are the gonads and scrotum. In humans I think this is usually delayed a few years. If you happen to own a prostate gland, you can't be sure of taking it to the grave. Also on the list could be moles, warts, hemangiomas, and hair from legs, eye brows and backs. I now have no confidence at all that my list is complete, but perhaps I have now listed all the really interesting parts.

There are of course always gray areas. Partial part removal such as for biopsy would include just about everything I suppose so let's just say this is a list of whole part removal. There is also the odd situation in which one may lose the use of a part but not the part itself. The colostomy procedure comes to mind. I believe this is the end of this post.

Well there you have both an anecdote and a musing, but is it at all amusing?