The SHO introduced Mrs Slater who had been admitted with abdominal pain. The on-call doctors had diagnosed that her abdominal pain was due to adhesions from her previous abdominal operations.
Dr Braver snatched the notes from him and scrutinised every page, nodding and smiling. Then, breaking the silence, he announced, “I have been taking this woman’s organs bit by bit.”
After turning more pages, he boasted, “Let’s see: appendicectomy at the age of twelve. Tubes and ovaries when I was a registrar. Then small bowel resection when I made a hole in the terminal ileum during division of adhesions. Partial cystectomy because the sigmoid colon was stuck to the bladder when I resected her sigmoid colon for diverticular disease. And I took the spleen with the stomach when I did a Polya. The gallbladder was grossly distended during the gastrectomy, I thought it was full of stones, so I did a cholecystectomy. What else is left?”
And turning to the patient, he asked, “Madam, what more do you want me to take this time?”
“Nothing more, Dr Braver, if I can avoid it,” she replied, her eyes drawn.