I has congenital megacolon, also known as Hirshprung\u2019s Disease. (It was also what Elvis Presley had!) I couldn\u2019t pass my bowels and it piled up. Doctors said it felt like a rock. They took me to a doctor when I was one year old (or earlies) and they did a bilateral sympathectomy, because the disorder was thought to be an imba-lance between the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic. But it didn\u2019t help. I needed an enema every night for the next six years.<\/p>\n
At age seven, I was taken up to the Mayo Clinic and after tests, they surgically removed my distended bowel and reattached the non-distended part to the upper part of the rectum that wasn\u2019t s0 distended. They left a colostomy in so that the functional part would shrink. Then I went back the next year and they closed it. By then I had for sure decided to help other kids. I was interested in becoming a doctor even before that—at age three!—because becoming a \u201cdoctor\u201d was a way to help other kids. (Thank goodness I was clumsy. I would have made a terrible surgeon!) I went into child psychiatry instead.)<\/p>\n
But reflecting on this again, I realized that all this happened within a relatively narrow window of time, when surgery was mature enough to do this. Now Hirsh-prungs Disease (congenital megacolon) is a recognized disorder—rare, but recog-nizable. (Elvis Presley had it!) It\u2019s diagnosed far sooner and a partial colectomy and colostomy aren\u2019t necessary. But for me, it confirmed my interest in medicine!<\/p>\n
The surgery was in 1944—I don\u2019t know how my parents did it at the height of wartime! But I’m forever grateful! The museum also confirmed it. Now that I reflect on it, I could say that it was very coincidental, but one could also claim Grace.<\/p>\n
I realized today now that I am a doctor, a physician, and over eighty years old (and a bit of a student of the history of medicine) that ten years earlier surgery wasn\u2019t yet mature enough, and ten years later would have been too late. I was \u201cjust right\u201d—as they say in the story of the Three Bears.<\/p>\n
So I became a doctor. Not a surgeon, though. A child psychiatrist. But close enough. This all was catalyzed by contact with a lady who had in some ways a similar ordeal—as a young woman with colitis. She is turning her ordeal into theatre!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I has congenital megacolon, also known as Hirshprung\u2019s Disease. (It was also what Elvis Presley had!) I couldn\u2019t pass my bowels and it piled up. Doctors said it felt like a rock. They took me to a doctor when I was one year old (or earlies) and they did a bilateral sympathectomy, because the disorder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,18,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-history","category-psychotherapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2903"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2904,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2903\/revisions\/2904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}