Though largely beneficient, Mother Nature is on occasion less than kind
to her progeny. The first example of her sometime wilful bad intent that enters
my brain is haemorrhoids (the thought of haemorrhoids entering the brain
is, I confess, somewhat surreal, and not a little gruesome). Other
examples are not hard to find. Despite
her few parental failings, however, I submit that we all ought to club together and
buy Mother Nature a big bunch of flowers. My reason is this: she has
chosen not to bestow upon the human race the phenomenon of itchy
internal organs.
Itchy internal organs! The very thought chills me to the core! What terror,
what torment would be involved in having, say, an itchy spleen! Even
as I write about it, I feel that I should stop; I am afflicted by a
superstitious thought that my merely mentioning itchy spleens will
summon that phenomenon from its slumber in the realm of
the merely possible, and drag it into the harsh, glaring light of the actual. How mind-achingly unbearable that
would be - an itch that
- you could not scratch; and
- being no mere surface irritation, would have invaded the most private
of spaces
Yuk!
And imagine the procedure for ridding oneself of such an itch. There
would simply be no alternative: it would be surgery or
nothing. Picture the scene. You are admitted to hospital with an itchy
pancreas. You are anaesthetised and wheeled to theatre, where you are
surrounded by green-gowned medical staff. Lights flash and monitors
beep on dizzyingly arcane hi-tech equipment. 'Scalpel!', a doctor
orders. The instrument is passed to her, and she makes her incision
with unconcious, practised ease. Her begloved hand enters the
fresh-gaping hole, and finds the pancreas.
She scratches, and you are sewn up.
Hours later, you awake, your mind fogged with the anaesthetic. You
purse your dry lips, and, with what seems a Herculean effort, you
speak. 'Down a bit, and to the left', you say.