MORTAL DILEMMAS
‘There is time for everything. Time to be born and a time to die.’- Ecclesiastes3:2 “When we have overcome absence with phone calls, winglessness with airplanes, summer heat with air conditioning- when we have overcome all these and much more besides, then there will be two things with which we must cope: the evil in our hearts and death.”- Lament for a son, Nicholas Wolterstroff. It was an unusual day in many ways. We had wrapped up neurosurgery OR by 4:30 pm and I had just visited my sister in law who was recuperating from a surgery. As it has become my habit now I religiously looked at the following day’s list. There was a 54 year old lady for the excision of a kidney mass in the schedule and since she was admitted in the next ward of my family member, I decided to have a look at her. A short plump woman lied on the distant corner of the ward with head propped up and body curled under thick blankets. The two sons were sitting next to her bed chatting indistinctly.