What is the oddest gift you have been given?
There was this little girl on my operating table a few years ago, her name was Anna, I only remember that because of what she said to me before she was taken away for surgery. She said "Dr. Jack, If I can walk again you can have my legs." At the time I wasn't really sure how to take it, she wasn't on any drugs and she'd been incredibly lucid since her accident yet she says something only another child might understand.
Her surgery was long and gratefully she had an 89 chance of success. It was 10 hours that surgery and there were no complications, probably one of the easiest surgeries of my career, not very memorable despite that fact.
It was two days later when I came in to Anna's room to check up on her. I've been told more times that not that by bedside manner leaves something to be desired so as much as I want to comfort patients I generally let the nurses deal with the heart to heart stuff. It might sound a little insensitive by if you knew my father you might understand. The point is when I went to visit her there was a little sack next to her bed. Anna told me to look in it and so I did.
I pulled out these life-size pair of stuffed legs. Anna explained that her mother made her dolls all the time for her to play with; one of the dolls was another Anna. So she had her mother go home and take off Anna's legs for me.
I can't tell you what I felt; Anna had given me her legs.
