10/18, 39 Years Ago and Today

October 18, 1973.  Many of my devoted readers probably weren't even born yet then, but to me it represents a "last time": the last time (as well as the first time) I had surgery performed on me while I was under general anesthesia.  On that day, I had an inguinal hernia repaired and recovered quickly.  I was seventeen then, so surgery wasn't that big a deal to me (although it worried the others in my family).  And, amazingly, through the decades that followed, leading to this very moment, the only invasive medical procedures I've undergone have been in the endoscopy/colonoscopy department.  Not even a broken bone to repair.  That's fortunate, but I'm savvy enough to know that I should just count my blessings and not be so self-assured about the future in this regard.  Actually...

Actually, there's a reasonable chance that, sometime during the next few years, I'll have to have some major corrective surgery done on me regarding a birth defect affecting my circulatory system in a potentially critical way.  But then again, maybe I won't ever need it, who knows.  It all depends on regular CT scans of the area in question, as well as my specialist/physician/surgeon's recommendations.

Oh, by the way, on a rather disconcerting note, it was while I was mostly bedridden at the hospital for my surgery and recovery back in '73 that I came to love listening to Led Zeppelin's oft-played masterpiece Stairway to Heaven on a local rock station (the one on 100.7 if memory serves me correctly). I didn't make the morbid connection between the song and my hospitalization until years later, but it was the first Zep song I truly loved...