I entered the hospital in late December for a quadruple-bypass following a heart attack. The seven-hour procedure went well, and I was sent home after nearly a week of post-operative hospital care.
It was while recuperating at home one morning that I noticed I had old man hands. Just weeks before, prior to entering the hospital, my hands had been firm but warm. Now they were weathered, wrinkled, withered, even a bit shriveled, and cold, always cold; now that I thought about it.
I held my hands up in front of my eyes and stared at them in disbelief. These are not my hands, I thought. These are not the hands I have carried with me through life thus far, I told myself. I was certain of it. The fingernails look familiar, and the knuckles, too. The skin, however, was definitely different. No question about that.
These were not the same hands I had on hand when I entered the hospital, I declared. And that was when it occurred to me. The doctors. For some reason the doctors must have surgically removed my original hands during the heart procedure and replaced them with the old man's hands I now looked upon.
Yes, that made complete sense. While they were harvesting arteries from legs to stitch around my heart they also took the time to remove my young and supple hands and replaced them with a pair of wrinkled and weathered hands, ones suited for a man well beyond my years. Why they would do this I could not explain, perhaps for their sick amusement, maybe to kill time in the operating room. A reasonable explanation escapes me to this time, but the fact remains that they clearly replaced my hands and managed to do so without leaving any sign of a surgical scar, none whatsoever.
So here I sit, recuperating at home with a newly rewired heart, so to speak, and a set of old man hands. And I give thanks for both.
-- Thank you for reading. Your comments and questions are always welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment