DIY History | Transcribe | Iowa Women’s Lives: Letters and Diaries | Eve Drewelowe's journals, volumes II-III, 1950s

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Eve Drewelowe's journals, volumes II-III, 1950s

Page 064

74. surgeon. the relevant point I am trying to make is that the doctor went fishing this alluring June morning and apparently had forgotten all about the fun he was going to have with me. Finally, however, he did appear, very late but quite unruffled. If I had been but a few years older and had not been quite so well trained in discipline, this man would have come back with his string of rainbows to an empty operating room. I would quite deliberately walk out on him now. If this were ever to occur again there would be no operation under similar conditions. Nor would any amount of coaxing or fixing it up be of any avail. There would be no recourse. Once I waited patiently. I not only waited but submitted to a none too gentle pawing over the entrails and digestive organs. I am not at all convinced that the appendectomy was necessary but since it had been begun it was just as well to go on and complete the two-hundred and fifty dollars worth. For all this I lay for days when I would rather have been dead; all distorted and bloated with gas, and agonizing pains that could not be stilled. Later when I was better the appendix was brought to my bedside by request and I dutifully inspected it. "Enlarged and inflamed", I had been told but it didn't appear extraordinarily large and only somewhat pink to me. I wasn't able to identify it but it may have been mine.

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74. surgeon. the relevant point I am trying to make is that the doctor went fishing this alluring June morning and apparently had forgotten all about the fun he was going to have with me. Finally, however, he did appear, very late but quite unruffled. If I had been but a few years older and had not been quite so well trained in discipline, this man would have come back with his string of rainbows to an empty operating room. I would quite deliberately walk out on him now. If this were ever to occur again there would be no operation under similar conditions. Nor would any amount of coaxing or fixing it up be of any avail. There would be no recourse. Once I waited patiently. I not only waited but submitted to a none too gentle pawing over the entrails and digestive organs. I am not at all convinced that the appendectomy was necessary but since it had been begun it was just as well to go on and complete the two-hundred and fifty dollars worth. For all this I lay for days when I would rather have been dead; all distorted and bloated with gas, and agonizing pains that could not be stilled. Later when I was better the appendix was brought to my bedside by request and I dutifully inspected it. "Enlarged and inflamed", I had been told but it didn't appear extraordinarily large and only somewhat pink to me. I wasn't able to identify it but it may have been mine.