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 005

I would have been one of the unlucky three percent. How differently I felt ten years later at Mayo's. It was a bad business but I had every confidence in my doctors. Not for a moment would I consider the thought that I would be a casualty. Not for a moment did I permit myself to think that I couldn't come through. I had every reason to believe that everything would be done for me and it was -- unquestionably. If ever again there is any mind but I hope there would be, I shall place myself with every trust into the hands of these great physicians and surgeon. Their faith is not unfounded.
At that time however, in 1931 the x-rays were negative. Some positive proof has to be produced to convince me surgery is a necessity. With me it can be only a last research procedure; a choice between a lesser and a greater evil. Even with a successful surgical performance -- successful from the technical point of view -- what was there to have been gained for me? Providing there had been an ulcer -- which there was not -- and it had been removed what would have been my guarantee that an ulcer would n't break out? Even locking my predisposition to ulcer, I still would have been made more vulnerable than I had been before a gastroenterostomy. There was no assurance that the results would be all or even a small part of those to be hoped for. As a matter of fact I am confirmed that surgery then would have been a tragedy. We thank our operation, I should always need to exercise great care in my selection of a bland diet; with surgery it would have meant substantiality the same thing only multiplied -- a strenuous siege of lifelong dieting. A patched piper lime -- patched though it may be because of an artificial break -- is never as strong or as beautiful

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I would have been one of the unlucky three percent. How differently I felt ten years later at Mayo's. It was a bad business but I had every confidence in my doctors. Not for a moment would I consider the thought that I would be a casualty. Not for a moment did I permit myself to think that I couldn't come through. I had every reason to believe that everything would be done for me and it was -- unquestionably. If ever again there is any mind but I hope there would be, I shall place myself with every trust into the hands of these great physicians and surgeon. Their faith is not unfounded. At that time however, in 1931 the x-rays were negative. Some positive proof has to be produced to convince me surgery is a necessity. With me it can be only a last research procedure; a choice between a lesser and a greater evil. Even with a successful surgical performance -- successful from the technical point of view -- what was there to have been gained for me? Providing there had been an ulcer -- which there was not -- and it had been removed what would have been my guarantee that an ulcer would n't break out? Even locking my predisposition to ulcer, I still would have been made more vulnerable than I had been before a gastroenterostomy. There was no assurance that the results would be all or even a small part of those to be hoped for. As a matter of fact I am confirmed that surgery then would have been a tragedy. We thank our operation, I should always need to exercise great care in my selection of a bland diet; with surgery it would have meant substantiality the same thing only multiplied -- a strenuous siege of lifelong dieting. A patched piper lime -- patched though it may be because of an artificial break -- is never as strong or as beautiful