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Medicine and life |
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The Bitter-Sweet of Anniversaries. One man's meat is another's poison.
Today is Wednesday, 7th December. To some it is the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbour, that Day of Infamy which led to Australia declaring war on Japan well into our long and bloody war against the Germans since 1939.
To others it is the anniversary of the revoking of the mutual excommunication by the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church which took place in 1054. It took until 7th Dec 1965 which is quite a while to mull over the problem. Pope Paul VI did the revocation. For two parents in our city is was the day their son, Daniel Morcombe in 2003 while he waited for a bus to take him Christmas shopping. Their persistence led to the largest police manhunt in our history with the apprehension of his killer in Perth 3000 miles away this year and the recovery of some of Daniel's bones. Their efforts have led to the Daniel Morcombe Foundation for safety and child protection. They were Australians of the Year this year. This day is the birthday of my youngest son, who arrived (as I had correctly predicted) a month early on Pearl Harbour Day. He is today 15. I feel very much for the Morcombes on this bitter sweet day. My son came early and he was a grunty infant with some lung immaturity and ended up in a humidicrib for a while and was the biggest baby there. He was jaundiced too and hated the lights and the mask on his eyes. I remember it well as goes the song sung by Maurice Chevalier in GiGi. Ah yes, I remember it well.
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For some it is for notoriety, for some narcissism, but for me it is to connect, reflect and to engage.
With regards the above topic, since 2003, on every birthday of this boy who went missing on 7th December, not only we but the whole nation has been reminded of him. His parents' untiring search for closure and justice at times became almost a "nuisance". I wish they would just give up and get on with life.
However, just as with the Jewish people's desire to track down NAZI war criminals more than 50 years after the holocaust, these parents were tireless and persistent.
They were triumphant even in death.
This is what my blogs is about; not about the tedium of modern medicine with its obsession with molecules, enzymes and C-reactive rhubarb. I did my PhD on an enzyme which shows you how anal we have become. These enzymes resided in the bodies of those who died in the ovens of Auschwitz.