And So It Goes

They say that life is a miracle. Each birth represents something radically new entering the world. What they don’t say, as the joke often goes, is that this “miracle” is rather gruesome in its procedure. With blood and fluids, screams and tears, life enters the world-through possibly the most excruciating pain life enters the world, pain which, I would imagine, renders the sufferer desiring death as an end from such terrible calamity. All this, of course, comes of reflection of what I saw today. Four students, myself included, had the privilege of shadowing a doctor at Patan Hospital this morning, and during our time we each saw two surgeries. While much could be said about the difference between the system at Patan and the distance at Avera or St. Cloud Hospital, what was most amazing was not these differences but what was actually taking place. Through two surgeries, I witnessed the progression of life.

Beginning at the end, ironically, I first witness a hysterectomy. A woman present with large cysts on her uterus, and as a result, the surgeons removed the whole of the uterus, the ovaries, and fallopian tubes, ending their slicing just at the cervix. After an hour of clamps, sutures, stitches, slices, cuts, and scalpels, the uterus, the womb, the bearer of human life lay there in a small plastic cup; the cysts protruded like some unholy growth, damning the owner to a hell crueler than one with fire and brimstone. But there it sat- all of its destructive power (hopefully) removed.

What amazed me the most was the size of the womb, however. It lay there in this plastic tin, taking up no more space than my two fists, but this, THIS!!!, can expand and hold life. And now, the expansion. The second surgery we saw was a Caesarean Section. First the iodine, then scalpel, then clamps, than scissors, then a tug here, a stretch there, then a leg, another!, the butt, the back, an arm, and finally, finally the head emerged. The newborn cried immediately and was quickly clamped; his umbilical cord cut, he was removed from his first dependence upon his mother (a dependence, which, in some sense, should be seen as representative of our dependence upon the world which sustains our lives). He cried and was wrapped, and then he struggled against the cotton confines of his new womb.

New life being brought into the world while death being removed. This is the way things should be. Creation remains while destruction is removed. Alas, though, to maintain this world, both have to exist. There remains a constant balance between creation and destruction, a cycle nearly. Everything that is at some time will not be, and everything that is at one point was not. Plato, anyone?