Surgery Complications Quotes

Health is normal. The human body is a self-repairing, self-defending, self-healing marvel. Disease is relatively difficult to induce, considering the body's powerful immune system. However, this complicated and delicate machinery can be damaged if fed the wrong fuel during the formative years. ... Healthy living with nutritional excellence throughout life can slow the decline of aging. It can prevent the years and years of suffering in ill health that is so common today as people get older and become dependent on medical treatments, drugs, and surgery. Nutritional excellence is the only real fountain of youth.

...it was complicated, she wasn't thinking only of herself but me too, since we'd both been through so many of the same things, she and I, and we were an awful lot alike-too much. And because we'd both been hurt so badly, so early on, in violent and irremediable ways that most people didn't, and couldn't, understand, wasn't it a bit… precarious? A matter of self-preservation? Two rickety and death-driven persons who would need to lean on each other quite so much? not to say she wasn't doing well at the moment, because she was, but all that could change in a flash with either of us, couldn't it? the reversal, the sharp downward slide, and wasn't that the danger? since our flaws and weaknesses were so much the same, and one of us could bring the other down way too quick? and though this was left to float in the air a bit, I realized instantly, and with some considerable astonishment, what she was getting at. (Dumb of me not to have seen it earlier, after all the injuries, the crushed leg, the multiple surgeries; adorable drag in the voice, adorable drag in the step, the arm-hugging and the pallor, the scarves and sweaters and multiple layers of clothes, slow drowsy smile: she herself, the dreamy childhood her, was sublimity and disaster, the morphine lollipop I'd chased for all those years.)

Few people outside medicine realize that what tortures doctors most is uncertainty, rather than the fact they often deal with people who are suffering or who are about to die. It is easy enough to let somebody die if one knows beyond doubt that they cannot be saved - if one is a decent doctor one will be sympathetic, but the situation is clear. This is life, and we all have to die sooner or later. It is when I do not know for certain whether I can help or not, or should help or not, that things become so difficult.

Not only weight loss surgery is unnecessary but also it deprives human being a normal life. People after surgery would never be able to enjoy their food ever for the rest of their life whether it is Christmas or they are on their holidays or their child birthday or any other festival. List of problems and complications after the weight loss surgery operation are endless as one may get additional problems such as Hernia, Internal Bleeding, Swelling of the skin around the wounds, etc. I wonder how many weight loss surgeons advice about weight loss surgery to their own family members.

There’s a reason they call childbirth labor. Making a healthy baby takes effort: It requires foresight and self-denial and courage. It’s expensive and demanding and tiring. You have to learn new things, change many habits, possibly deal with complicated medical situations, make difficult decisions, and undergo stressful ordeals. I had a wisdom tooth pulled without Novocaine while I was pregnant—it hurt a lot and seemed to go on forever. The kindness of the very young dental assistant, holding back my hair as I spat blood into a bowl, will stay with me for the rest of my life. Pregnant women do such things, and much harder things, all the time. For example, they give birth, which is somewhere on the scale between painful and excruciating. Or they have a cesarean, as I did, which is major surgery. None of this is without risk of death or damage or trauma, including psychological trauma. To force girls and women to undergo all this against their will is to annihilate their humanity. When they undertake it by choice, we should all be grateful.

decisions perhaps influenced by money, professional bias (for example, surgeons tend to favor surgery), and personal idiosyncrasy.

In surgery, as in anything else, skill and confidence are learned through experience

Surgery itself is a kind of autopsy. “Autopsy” literally means “to see for oneself,” and, despite our knowledge and technology, when we look we’re often unprepared for what we find.

A ubiquitous phrase encountered in obituaries is “died from complications following surgery,” but what is not well understood is that these “complications” are quite frequently multi-drug resistant infections. —

In some way, it may be in the nature of surgery itself to want to come to grips with the uncertainties and dilemmas of practical medicine. Surgery has become as high tech as medicine gets, but the best surgeons retain a deep recognition of the limitations of both science and human skill. Yet still they must act decisively.

Surgeons, as a group, adhere to a curious egalitarianism. They believe in practice, not talent. People often assume that you have to have great hands to become a surgeon, but it’s not true. When I interviewed to get into surgery programs, no one made me sew or take a dexterity test or checked if my hands were steady. You do not even need all ten fingers to be accepted. To be sure, talent helps. Professors say every two or three years they’ll see someone truly gifted come through a program—someone who picks up complex manual skills unusually quickly, sees the operative field as a whole, notices trouble before it happens. Nonetheless, attending surgeons say that what’s most important to them is finding people who are conscientious, industrious, and boneheaded enough to stick at practicing this one difficult thing day and night for years on end. As one professor of surgery put it to me, given a choice between a Ph.D. who had painstakingly cloned a gene and a talented sculptor, he’d pick the Ph.D. every time. Sure, he said, he’d bet on the sculptor being more physically talented; but he’d bet on the Ph.D. being less “flaky.” And in the end that matters more. Skill, surgeons believe, can be taught; tenacity cannot.

Heart disease is the Jeffrey Dahmer of modern ailments. It kills more than 25 percent of us. That’s one person in the United States dying of it every 37 seconds. Expanding fitness just a bit—the equivalent of a person improving their max running speed from five to six miles an hour—reduces the risk of heart disease by 30 percent, according to the American Heart Association. Next is cancer. It kills 22.8 percent of us. The most fit people face a 45 percent lower risk of dying from the disease, according to a study in the Annals of Oncology. Then we have accidents. They take 6.8 percent of us. If a person is in a serious car accident, being in shape drops their chances of dying by 80 percent, according to a study in the Emergency Medical Journal. If the docs have to operate—regardless of whether it’s an emergency or a planned surgery—fitter people also face fewer surgical complications and recover faster than unfit people, say scientists in Brazil.

Most crisis facilities’ failings,” Dupont said, “happen because they are underfunded, so they tend to restrict the doorway. Pretty soon there are facilities that will not take the handicapped, will not take the blind, the mentally ill, or those under the influence of alcohol and drugs. If I were [the] police, I would be asking, ‘Well what do you take?’ We are going to take all comers, and will sort it out. If it turns out to be a complicated medical problem which needs surgery, we can take that too. I think our ability to take care of the range of needs is what is impressive.”7

When Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935, old age was defined as sixty-five years, yet estimated life expectancy in the United States at the time was sixty-one years for males and sixty-four years for females.62 A senior citizen today, however, can expect to live eighteen to twenty years longer. The downside is that he or she also should expect to die more slowly. The two most common causes of death in 1935 America were respiratory diseases (pneumonia and influenza) and infectious diarrhea, both of which kill rapidly. In contrast, the two most common causes of death in 2007 America were heart disease and cancer (each accounted for about 25 percent of total deaths). Some heart attack victims die within minutes or hours, but most elderly people with heart disease survive for years while coping with complications such as high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, general weakness, and peripheral vascular disease. Many cancer patients also remain alive for several years following their diagnosis because of chemo-therapy, radiation, surgery, and other treatments. In addition, many of the other leading causes of death today are chronic illnesses such as asthma, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease, and there has been an upsurge in the occurrence of nonfatal but chronic illnesses such as osteoarthritis, gout, dementia, and hearing loss.63 Altogether, the growing prevalence of chronic illness among middle-aged and elderly individuals is contributing to a health-care crisis because the children born during the post–World War II baby boom are now entering old age, and an unprecedented percentage of them are suffering from lingering, disabling, and costly diseases. The term epidemiologists coined for this phenomenon is the “extension of morbidity.

attending surgeons say that what’s most important to them is finding people who are conscientious, industrious, and boneheaded enough to stick at practicing this one difficult thing day and night for years on end. As one professor of surgery put it to me, given a choice between a Ph.D. who had painstakingly cloned a gene and a talented sculptor, he’d pick the Ph.D. every time. Sure, he said, he’d bet on the sculptor being more physically talented; but he’d bet on the Ph.D. being less “flaky.” And in the end that matters more. Skill, surgeons believe, can be taught; tenacity cannot. It’s an odd approach to recruitment, but it continues all the way up the ranks, even in top surgery departments. They take minions with no experience in surgery, spend years training them, and then take most of their faculty from these same homegrown ranks. And it works.

operative risk, it was the best kind of tumor to have, and the best place to have it; surgery would almost certainly eliminate her seizures. The alternative was a lifetime on toxic antiseizure medications. But I could see that the idea of brain surgery terrified her, more than most. She was lonesome and in a strange place, having been swept out of the familiar hubbub of a shopping mall and into the alien beeps and alarms and antiseptic smells of an ICU. She would likely refuse surgery if I launched into a detached spiel detailing all the risks and possible complications. I could do so, document her refusal in the chart, consider my duty discharged, and move on to the next task. Instead, with her permission, I gathered her family with her, and together we calmly talked through the options. As we talked, I could see the enormousness of the choice she faced dwindle into a difficult but understandable decision. I had met her in a space where she was a person, instead of a problem to be solved. She chose surgery.

In 2013 a study published in the Journal of Patient Safety8 put the number of premature deaths associated with preventable harm at more than 400,000 per year. (Categories of avoidable harm include misdiagnosis, dispensing the wrong drugs, injuring the patient during surgery, operating on the wrong part of the body, improper transfusions, falls, burns, pressure ulcers, and postoperative complications.) Testifying to a Senate hearing in the summer of 2014, Peter J. Pronovost, MD, professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and one of the most respected clinicians in the world, pointed out that this is the equivalent of two jumbo jets falling out of the sky every twenty-four hours. “What these numbers say is that every day, a 747, two of them are crashing. Every two months, 9/11 is occurring,” he said. “We would not tolerate that degree of preventable harm in any other forum.”9 These figures place preventable medical error in hospitals as the third biggest killer in the United States—behind only heart disease and cancer.

GASTRIC BYPASS SURGERY COMPLICATIONS: 14-YEAR FOLLOW-UP11 Vitamin B12 deficiency 239 39.9 percent Readmit for various reasons 229 38.2 percent Incisional hernia 143 23.9 percent Depression 142 23.7 percent Staple line failure   90 15.0 percent Gastritis   79 13.2 percent Cholecystitis   68 11.4 percent Anastomotic problems   59 9.8 percent Dehydration, malnutrition   35 5.8 percent Dilated pouch   19 3.2 percent

Stomach stapling or intestinal reduction surgery is invasive, you run the risk of infection, and you will probably suffer reflux the rest of your life. You could even die from complications of diabetes.

A study of heart patients in 6 separate hospitals sought to determine whether prayers from strangers would have any effect on a person's recovery (1). After carefully following the recovery of 1,800 heart surgery patients for 30 days after the surgery, researchers found absolutely no link between prayer and recovery. However, there was a significant difference between those who were aware of the fact that they were being prayed for and those who did not know. Those who knew ended up suffering more complications, possibly due to the additional stress it caused. Being told that a high number of people are praying for your recovery might increase how severe you would perceive your illness to be and thus negatively affect your recovery. To date, there have been no reputable scientific studies showing any clear link between prayer and healing.

The tumor will eventually take Paul’s life. However, focused ultrasound therapy could transform a fatal condition into one that is chronic, but manageable. In contrast to the best current treatment circa 2015, the futuristic ultrasound therapy depicted here circa 2025 could potentially be accomplished on an outpatient basis without multiple days of hospitalization; without surgery and its attendant risks of infection and complications like blood clots and brain damage; without the harmful effects of radiation; and with minimal side effects of chemotherapy due to focused drug delivery. The net result could be a dramatic improvement in the quality and longevity of countless lives, and decreased cost of treatment.

a surgeon implants a material, as a general rule she/he should be capable of managing most of the complications including removal and revision. With that said, some complications will and should require consultation from appropriate specialists. Casual implantation of bolsters, especially those that are permanent, is not a wise idea.

Today’s pubic hair removal may indicate something similar: we have opened our most intimate parts to unprecedented scrutiny, evaluation, commodification. Largely as a result of the Brazilian trend, cosmetic labiaplasty, the clipping of the folds of skin surrounding the vulva, has skyrocketed: while still well behind nose and boob jobs, according to the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (ASAPS), there was a 44 percent rise in the procedure between 2012 and 2013—and a 64 percent jump the previous year. Labiaplasty is almost never related to sexual function or pleasure; it can actually impede both. Never mind: Dr. Michael Edwards, the ASAPS president in 2013, hailed the uptick as part of “an ever-evolving concept of beauty and self-confidence.” The most sought-after look, incidentally, is called—are you ready?—the Barbie: a “‘ clamshell’-type effect in which the outer labia appear fused, with no labia minora protruding.” I trust I don’t need to remind the reader that Barbie is (a) made of plastic and (b) has no vagina.

Not, I hasten to say, that writing is ever all that hard. Beware of writers who tell you how hard they work. (Beware of anyone who tries to tell you that.) Writing is indeed often dark and lonely, but no one really has to do it. Yes, writing can be complicated, exhausting, isolating, abstracting, boring, dulling, briefly exhilarating; it can be made to be grueling and demoralizing. And occasionally it can produce rewards. But it’s never as hard as, say, piloting an L-1011 into O’Hare on a snowy night in January, or doing brain surgery when you have to stand up for ten hours straight, and once you start you just can’t stop. If you’re a writer, you can stop anywhere, any time, and no one will care or every know. Plus, the results might be better. -- Richard Ford, Writers on Writing

Researchers routinely used Black subjects. In 1845, Alabama’s J. Marion Sims horrifically started experimenting on the vaginas of eleven enslaved women for a procedure to heal a complication of childbirth called vesicovaginal fistula. The procedures were “not painful enough to justify the trouble” of anesthesia, he said. It was a racist idea to justify his cruelty, not something Sims truly knew from his experiments. “Lucy’s agony was extreme,” Sims later noted in his memoir. After a marathon of surgeries into the early 1850s—one woman, Anarcha, suffered under his knife thirty times—Sims perfected the procedure for curing the fistula. Anesthesia in hand, Sims started healing White victims, moved to New York, built the first woman’s hospital, and fathered American gynecology. A massive bronze and granite monument dedicated to him—the first US statue depicting a physician—now sits at Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street, across from the Academy of Medicine.

Right now, there are only two hospitals in the world that offer the Gerson Therapy, though there are countless centers that have integrated its nutrition and detox plan into their kitchens and protocols. One is located in Mexico. The other is in Hungary. Why only two? The reasons for this are…very complicated. When it comes to cancer, physicians in North America are legally obligated to recommend chemo, surgery, radiation, or sometimes gene therapy or immunotherapy.

* Who do you think of when you hear the word “successful”? “The first people who come to mind are the real heroes of Task Unit Bruiser: Marc Lee, first SEAL killed in Iraq. Mike Monsoor, second SEAL killed in Iraq, posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor after he jumped on a grenade to save three of our other teammates. And finally, Ryan Job, one of my guys [who was] gravely wounded in Iraq, blinded in both eyes, but who made it back to America, was medically retired from the Navy, but who died from complications after the 22nd surgery to repair his wounds. Those guys, those men, those heroes, they lived, and fought, and died like warriors.” * Most-gifted or recommended books? “I think there’s only one book that I’ve ever given and I’ve only given it to a couple people. That’s a book called About Face, by Colonel David H. Hackworth. The other book that I’ve read multiple times is Blood Meridian [by Cormac McCarthy].” * Favorite documentaries? “Restrepo, which I’m sure you’ve seen. [TF: This was co-produced and co-filmed by Sebastian Junger, the next profile.] There is also an hour-long program called ‘A Chance in Hell: The Battle for Ramadi.’” Quick Takes * You walk into a bar. What do you order from the bartender? “Water.” * What does your diet generally look like? “It generally looks like steak.” * What kind of music does Jocko listen to? Two samples: For workouts—Black Flag, My War, side B In general—White Buffalo

The importance of a group seeing one another may sound trivial, but it can be deadly serious. Until recently when medical teams gathered to operate on a patient, studies showed that they often did not know one another's names before starting. A 2001 John's Hopkins study showed that when members introduced themselves and shared concerns ahead of time, the likelihood of complications and deaths fell by 35%. Surgeons, like many of us felt they shouldn't waste time with the formalities of seeing and being seen, for something as important as saving lives, yet it was these silly formalities that directly affected the outcomes of surgeries. It was when [the surgical team] practiced good gathering principles that they felt more comfortable speaking up during surgery and offering solutions.

In 1984, a psychologist named Roger Ulrich studied patients recuperating from gallbladder surgery at a Pennsylvania hospital. Some patients were assigned to a room overlooking a small strand of deciduous trees. Others were assigned to rooms that overlooked a brick wall. Urlich describes the results: “Patients with the natural window view had shorter post-operative hospital stays, had fewer negative comments in nurses’ notes . . . and tended to have lower scores for minor post-surgical complications such as persistent headache or nausea requiring medication. Moreover, the wall-view patients required many more injections of potent painkillers.” The implications of this obscure study are enormous. Proximity to nature doesn’t just give us a warm, fuzzy feeling. It affects our physiology in real, measurable ways. It’s not a giant leap to conclude that proximity to nature makes us happier. That’s why even the most no-nonsense office building includes a park or atrium (in the belief, no doubt, that a happy worker is a productive one).

Even in surgery there have been some encouraging developments. For instance, operating on the wrong knee or foot or other body part of a patient has been a recurrent, if rare, mistake. A typical response has been to fire the surgeon. Recently, however, hospitals and surgeons have begun to recognize that the body’s bilateral symmetry makes these errors predictable. In 1998, the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons endorsed a simple way of preventing them: make it standard practice for surgeons to initial, with a marker, the body part to be cut before the patient comes to surgery.

Trained Obstetrician and Gynaecologist in Dubai Dr Elsa de Menezes Fernandes is a UK trained Obstetrician and Gynaecologist. She completed her basic training in Goa, India, graduating from Goa University in 1993. After Residency, she moved to the UK, where she worked as a Senior House Officer in London at the Homerton, Southend General, Royal London and St. Bartholomew’s Hospitals in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She completed five years of Registrar and Senior Registrar training in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in London at The Whittington, University College, Hammersmith, Ealing and Lister Hospitals and Gynaecological Oncology at the Hammersmith and The Royal Marsden Hospitals. During her post-graduate training in London she completed Membership from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. In 2008 Dr Elsa moved to Dubai where she worked as a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at Mediclinic City Hospital until establishing her own clinic in Dubai Healthcare City in March 2015. She has over 20 years specialist experience. Dr Elsa has focused her clinical work on maternal medicine and successfully achieved the RCOG Maternal Medicine Special Skills Module. She has acquired a vast amount of experience working with high risk obstetric patients and has worked jointly with other specialists to treat patients who have complex medical problems during pregnancy. During her training she gained experience in Gynaecological Oncology from her time working at St Bartholomew’s, Hammersmith and The Royal Marsden Hospitals in London. Dr Elsa is experienced in both open and laparoscopic surgery and has considerable clinical and operative experience in performing abdominal and vaginal hysterectomies and myomectomies. She is also proficient in the technique of hysteroscopy, both diagnostic and operative for resection of fibroids and the endometrium. The birth of your baby, whether it is your first or a happy addition to your family, is always a very personal experience and Dr Elsa has built a reputation on providing an experience that is positive and warmly remembered. She supports women’s choices surrounding birth and defines her role in the management of labour and delivery as the clinician who endeavours to achieve safe motherhood. She is a great supporter of vaginal delivery. Dr Elsa’s work has been published in medical journals and she is a member of the British Maternal and Fetal Medicine Society. She was awarded CCT (on the Specialist Register) in the UK. Dr Elsa strives to continue her professional development and has participated in a wide variety of courses in specialist areas, including renal diseases in pregnancy and medical complications in pregnancy.

someone with more muscle mass is less likely to fall and injure themselves, while those who are less likely to fall for other reasons (better balance, more body awareness) will also have an easier time maintaining muscle mass. Conversely, muscle atrophy and sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss) increase our risk of falling and possibly requiring surgery—while at the same time worsening our odds of surviving said surgery without complications.

He was immediately taken aback, recognizing that an empty stomach is what we require for patients going to surgery. I tried

He was immediately taken aback, recognizing that an empty stomach is what we require for patients going to surgery. I tried to smooth matters over, saying that holding off was merely “routine procedure” until we had finished our evaluation.

She said she would not go ahead with surgery.

Weston retained her reputation and position as one of the prominent medieval scholars of her time. She continued working until her death, which occurred at the age of 77 on September 29, 1928, after complications following cancer surgery. Her obituary in the Times included not just a mention of her work, but of her general positive attitude in the face of critics, noting that, "her charming personality and her great sense of humour won her the enduring affection of a host of friends all over the world...

Expanding fitness just a bit—the equivalent of a person improving their max running speed from five to six miles an hour—reduces the risk of heart disease by 30 percent, according to the American Heart Association. Next is cancer. It kills 22.8 percent of us. The most fit people face a 45 percent lower risk of dying from the disease, according to a study in the Annals of Oncology. Then we have accidents. They take 6.8 percent of us. If a person is in a serious car accident, being in shape drops their chances of dying by 80 percent, according to a study in the Emergency Medical Journal. If the docs have to operate—regardless of whether it’s an emergency or a planned surgery—fitter people also face fewer surgical complications and recover faster than unfit people, say scientists in Brazil.

We have no illusions about this. ... When an attending physician brings a family member in for surgery, people at the hospital think hard about how much to let the trainees participate. ... Conversely, the ward services and clinics where residents have the most responsibility are populated by the poor, the uninsured, the drunk, and the demented.

Will prayer be the cost-effective solution to America’s health care challenges? Probably not. The researchers did not find any difference in the rate of complications within thirty days of surgery for those who were offered prayers compared with those who were not. Critics of the study pointed out a potential omitted variable: prayers coming from other sources. As the New York Times summarized, “Experts said the study could not overcome perhaps the largest obstacle to prayer study: the unknown amount of prayer each person received from friends, families, and congregations around the world who pray daily for the sick and dying.

Paediatric Pancreatitis: What is it and How is it Treated? Pancreatitis refers to the inflammation of the pancreas. The pancreas is a long, flat gland located behind the stomach in the upper abdomen. It produces enzymes that help in digestion and hormones that help regulate body sugar. According to Dr Ashish Dharmik, MBBS, MS and MCH (General Surgery), Senior Consultant in Paediatrics and General Surgery, pancreatitis is uncommon in children and may improve with treatment. If left unnoticed, however, it can cause life-threatening complications. Hence, if you notice any change in your child’s health, consult the best child specialist in Chandigarh at the earliest.

When I go to policy conferences and hear experts say “The only important thing in health care is outcomes,” I feel torn. I want to agree with them, but I know the subtleties involved in how the starting population is defined. If you have unnecessary surgery with no complications, that's not a great outcome.

Early Pregnancy Complications . . #gynecology #obstetrics #pregnancy #gynecologist #womenshealth #obgyn #medicine #doctor #infertility #surgery #health #medical #ginecologia #pregnant

In 1984, a psychologist named Roger Ulrich studied patients recuperating from gallbladder surgery at a Pennsylvania hospital. Some patients were assigned to a room overlooking a small strand of deciduous trees. Others were assigned to rooms that overlooked a brick wall. Urlich describes the results: “Patients with the natural window view had shorter post-operative hospital stays, had fewer negative comments in nurses’ notes . . . and tended to have lower scores for minor post-surgical complications such as persistent headache or nausea requiring medication. Moreover, the wall-view patients required many more injections of potent painkillers.

There are risks to this surgery, but they used to be much greater.

Dharma Master Cheng Yen is a Buddhist nun living in Hualien County, a mountainous region on the east coast of Taiwan. Because the mountains formed barriers to travel, the area has a high proportion of indigenous people, and in the 1960s many people in the area, especially indigenous people, were living in poverty. Although Buddhism is sometimes regarded as promoting a retreat from the world to focus on the inner life, Cheng Yen took the opposite path. In 1966, when Cheng Yen was twenty-nine, she saw an indigenous woman with labor complications whose family had carried her for eight hours from their mountain village to Hualien City. On arriving they were told they would have to pay for the medical treatment she needed. Unable to afford the cost of treatment they had no alternative but to carry her back again. In response, Cheng Yen organized a group of thirty housewives, each of whom put aside a few cents each day to establish a charity fund for needy families. It was called Tzu Chi, which means “Compassionate Relief.” Gradually word spread, and more people joined.6 Cheng Yen began to raise funds for a hospital in Hualien City. The hospital opened in 1986. Since then, Tzu Chi has established six more hospitals. To train some of the local people to work in the hospital, Tzu Chi founded medical and nursing schools. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of its medical schools is the attitude shown to corpses that are used for medical purposes, such as teaching anatomy or simulation surgery, or for research. Obtaining corpses for this purpose is normally a problem in Chinese cultures because of a Confucian tradition that the body of a deceased person should be cremated with the body intact. Cheng Yen asked her volunteers to help by willing their bodies to the medical school after their death. In contrast to most medical schools, here the bodies are treated with the utmost respect for the person whose body it was. The students visit the family of the deceased and learn about his or her life. They refer to the deceased as “silent mentors,” place photographs of the living person on the walls of the medical school, and have a shrine to each donor. After the course has concluded and the body has served its purpose, all parts are replaced and the body is sewn up. The medical school then arranges a cremation ceremony in which students and the family take part. Tzu Chi is now a huge organization, with seven million members in Taiwan alone—almost 30 percent of the population—and another three million members associated with chapters in 51 countries. This gives it a vast capacity to help. After a major earthquake hit Taiwan in 1999, Tzu Chi rebuilt 51 schools. Since then it has done the same after disasters in other countries, rebuilding 182 schools in 16 countries. Tzu Chi promotes sustainability in everything it does. It has become a major recycler, using its volunteers to gather plastic bottles and other recyclables that are turned into carpets and clothing. In order to promote sustainable living as well as compassion for sentient beings all meals served in Tzu Chi hospitals, schools, universities, and other institutions are vegetarian.

In 1845, Alabama’s J. Marion Sims horrifically started experimenting on the vaginas of eleven enslaved women for a procedure to heal a complication of childbirth called vesicovaginal fistula. The procedures were “not painful enough to justify the trouble” of anesthesia, he said. It was a racist idea to justify his cruelty, not something Sims truly knew from his experiments. “Lucy’s agony was extreme,” Sims later noted in his memoir. After a marathon of surgeries into the early 1850s—one woman, Anarcha, suffered under his knife thirty times—Sims perfected the procedure for curing the fistula. Anesthesia in hand, Sims started healing White victims, moved to New York, built the first woman’s hospital, and fathered American gynecology. A massive bronze and granite monument dedicated to him—the first US statue depicting a physician—now sits at Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street, across from the Academy of Medicine.19

It is within this network of intermediary neurons, arranged end-to-end and side-by-side between our sensory nerve endings and our motor units, that all of our tone levels, reflexes, gestures, habits, tendencies, feelings, attitudes, postures, styles have their genesis. It is called the internuncial net, and it has come into its fullest flower in the human being. [Internuncios were official messengers for the Pope, taking information and bringing back responses from the various courts of Europe.) This net composes roughly ninety percent of our nervous systems, including the entire spinal cord and the brain. It is nothing less than the total activity of this internuncial net which influences the responses of the motor units. Let us recall our stiff old man who was anaesthetized for surgery. The anaesthesia had no direct effect on either sensory endings or motor units; rather, it interrupted the normal flow of signals in the internuncial network in the brain. The result was flaccid, unresponsive muscles, and a blanking out of all sensation produced by the scalpel and the probe. It is only by influencing the flow of impulses through the vast internuncial net that we can have any effect upon tone, habit, and behavior. The conditions which direct that flow into specific patterns have been evolved through the handling of particular qualities and amounts of sensory experience and the repetitions of specific appropriate motor responses. One of the readiest means we have of actually influencing—rather than just temporarily interrupting—the conditions within the net is the introduction of more and more positive sensory experience, which elicits new kinds of motor responses, and can thus form the basis for the development of new habits, new conditions, new patterns of neural flow. The complexities of the internuncial net are forbidding. The suggestion that bodywork might in some way make significant and lasting changes in its function may sound like the ravings of a necromancer turned amateur neurosurgeon. We know so very little, and would presume to do so much. And yet we do know that very simple means can produce remarkable and demonstrably repeatable results in this fantastically complicated network. Infants who do not receive adequate physical stimulation die or are dwarfed and deformed. Laboratory rats who are handled on a daily basis develop markedly stronger resistance to fatal diseases, even to the loss of vital organs. Between these two extremes is a wide spectrum of quantity and quality of touching, all of which must certainly affect the health of the organism if touch in the orphanage and in the laboratory can be proven to be so crucial.

Common sense is like a fresh, simplistic, non-prejudiced analysis of a problem that was otherwise considered complicated.

Surgery is easy; it's recovery that's hard.

The best books are like complicated surgery--first you can't get your head out of them, and then you can't get them out of your head.