Al's Neck

A few blogs back, I tried to answer a person's query about what a surgeon thought about before an operation. Later, it occurred to me that I had one experience that was funny to the patient and me too.

I used to play golf occasionally with a local man, who I'll call Al. He was a nice guy and a good golfer. Al was a much better golfer than I was, but we enjoyed the game together. Al's wife was also a good athlete, and I could barely beat her in a tennis match.

Well, one day Al shows up in my office as a patient. He had a good dose of every neurosurgeon's dream case, a classic ruptured disc in his neck. Al's was textbook in every way. Patients such as this always have a great result, and I was pleased that Al would be happy with my treatment. So we put Al in the hospital, ran a confirmatory test, and got him on the surgical schedule.

The evening before he was to have his operation, it occurred to me that neither Al or his wife had ever seen me do anything but play golf or tennis. I always struggled to beat his wife, and I never came close to matching Al's golf scores. I dropped by Al's hospital room as was my routine on pre-op patients. While there, I said, "Al, I want you to know that I do this operation a whole lot better than I play golf". He got a kick out of that, and he got the expected good result.