Thanks, everyone! It's gotten a little rough, now that the anaesthesia has completely worn off... but I'm in better shape than I would have expected.
You know, bringing this back to a space topic in some form or another, this is only the third time in my adult life I've ever been under general anaesthesia. The last time was a bad attack of appendicitis I had four years ago, which brought to mind, at the time, a serious question about long-duration manned flights to places far, far away...
You see, one thing my doctor told me, that I discovered a fair amount of supporting evidence for on the 'net, was that there seems to be a correlation between people who get their tonsils removed as children and those who have to have their appendices removed as adults. See, I was a little surprised that I would have held on to my appendix until age 46, only to get a severe case of appendicitis that would require an emergency appendectomy. When I brought it up with my surgeon in a post-operative checkup, he told me about this correlation -- and, indeed, I had my tonsils and adenoids removed when I was about 8 years old.
And that got me thinking -- on interplanetary manned flights, is there some value in the prophylactic removal of the appendices of all crew who still had theirs? Or would you just suggest this for those who still had their appendices, but not their tonsils?
I know that I was pretty well incapacitated in the wake of that emergency appendectomy, for a good three weeks. and wasn't back to normal for another two or three weeks beyond that. Even if you were able to outfit a complete surgery within, say, a Mars-bound spacecraft (which would be rather tricky in zero-G), you'd have an incapacitated crewperson on your hands for a while -- which could be a serious inconvenience, or even a dagerous situation, depending on the timing of the event.
So -- would it make sense to simply remove everyone's appendix before they take off on a three-year expedition to Mars? Or to an asteroid? Anywhere where you're months away from home at best?
-the other Doug
p.s. -- the appendectomy has a rather funny story to it. They had given me a shot of morphine when they figured out just what I was suffering from, so I was high as a kite, to put it mildly. They had taken a CAT scan of my abdomen to confirm the extent of the appendicitis (quite severe, just on the verge of bursting), and told me literally as I was wheeled out of the CAT scan room the extent of the problem and the urgency of getting me into an operating room as soon as possible. The surgeon then added, "By the way, I have to tell you, you have the largest appendix I have ever seen in my life. Granted, it's distended, but it it still larger than anyone else's I have ever seen."
So, they wheel me into the pre-op staging room (little more than an oversized closet), where my now-ex-wife stood there next to my bed, waiting for them to take me into the OR. In my morphine haze, I told her what the surgeon had told me, and then I added, "You know, I always wanted to have a really huge organ -- I just have to be more specific in what I wish for!" At which point, I heard a loud noise, turned my head, and saw a nurse at the foot of my bed, bent halfway over, laughing hysterically.
What can I say? Once a comedian, always a comedian...
-toD
