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02/02/10(Tue)22:25:50 No. 7360702 >>7355124 Wow. That's pretty intense. My
father is a surgeon, and I had the privilege of accompanying him to the
OR to take pictures a few times. One of the surgeries was adjusting an
ankle (take a divot from one side of it and wedge it into the other
side), but the other was a forefoot amputation due to complications of
Type 2 diabetes (manage your fucking diabetes, brobots; it's not a nice
way to go). The blood made me faintly panicky at first, but on the
whole, it was really inspiring. I never thought of my father as
brilliantly competent, but he was *really* impressive at work. The
amputation, though, was sad. Seeing the front half of the guy's foot
sitting in the metal dish, toes incongruously intact... it filled me
with overwhelming sadness. My father said that he felt it too, that an
amputation is a failure of a sort. That, and morbidity for amputees,
especially BK or AK leg amputees, is very high. I've since
become consumed by the question of whether I could perform surgery or
an autopsy on someone I loved, and whether a yes or no answer makes me
a worse person.