Under the Thumb.

It may be almost illegal these days to say that about a husband-wife relationship! Particularly if you are the male speaking! There I go, being provocative again. But I’m not talking about a person but about a load of work.

Some years ago I self published a book – a sort of autobiography come medical journey of mine. It sold out and is 10 years out of date at any rate. Then a few years ago I wrote a book, probably better called a booklet, for my students as they began their clinical surgical courses. It was relevant to their situation with lack of facilities and language difficulties. Their ability to read thick tomes was limited, so I tried to put the very relevant stuff in a compressed form. As I meet a new era of Western students sold on investigations, before physical examinations, I’m convinced that it may be of use to them also.

I’m pretty dumb, computer wise, but my eldest son, who lives on our farm and runs it and who runs me is a wizard. He wants to reproduce them and also shortly after them another pictorial cum anecdotal short book of our lives. So at the moment the thumb of pressure to get it done on time is hard on me! Publication date for the first two is set for November 27. Between now and then we have a granddaughter’s wedding to attend about 1,500Km away, and a sheep shed to get built, so the pressure is on, the thumb is pressing down.

My first book was called ‘Have Scalpel – Will Travel’, and the new edition will have the same name but with ‘Revised and Updated’ added. The other will be ‘Medical Diagnosis – a Surgical Approach.’ I’m slowly labouring through the third one – as yet unnamed.

The introduction to the first book was and will remain as follows: –

They cut off the tip of his ear.
Yes he was a thief and this was the custom.
He was naked and caught stealing clothes left out by the river to dry.
He could see no-one but they saw him!
He was tightly bound with his hands behind his back and taken to court.
Eventually he was brought to the hospital.
One arm was already gangrenous. It had to be amputated.
The other – the nerve supply had been cut off by the pressure of the binding and the arm was paralysed, probably forever. 

How did he feed himself?
How? He had his food put on the cupboard by the bed – but there was no one to feed him.
He had to feed himself.
So he got up like a dog on his knees and elbows.
He ate like a dog.
My heart was touched and so each day I stayed back at lunch time and fed him myself.
What became of him? I don’t know.
But to God he is a person – to the others he was just a thief. 

One night I sat in the common room of Addis Ababa HQ of SIM – the mission with which I was associated. I had just come up from Soddo on business and had left behind this one who deeply disturbed me. People were singing that beautiful old hymn ‘Peace, perfect peace when all around….’ Yet I was not totally at peace. Sitting in that common room I was not totally at peace. Was I doing all that could and should be done in these circumstances? Certainly the future my young thief saw ahead had no pension, no physiotherapy, and no social support. 

Am I my brother’s keeper? 

Maybe more later. Watch this space!

?Dominic Cartier