Lucky Dog

I'm a lucky dog. Came out of that one clean.

No need to worry, I'm fully recovered now.

Please don't make a fuss. The surgery was a complete success.

Yes, it was a serious infection.

Yes, many people have died from it.

Yes, it could have been fatal.

But I'm fine. Really!

What did I have?

A Periapical infection and a root canal.

You see it is only by virtue of the fact that I was born in the US in 1958 that I'm alive. Had I been born 150 years ago or 150 miles south of the the border, it's quite possible that the infection would have gone untreated and I would quite possible have died.

Althouth the pain of the infection was excruciating (the root canal was a piece of cake by comparison), I never feared for my life. I knew that once I made the decision, I would have my pick of hundreds of trained medical practitioners who would operate on me and within a couple of days I would be back to normal.

How different the fate for so many people in so many far away places and times.

As I was recuperating I began to list the number of times that I was saved by the fortune of my birth place and time.

Well there's the fact that I was a 3.5 pound baby born 6 weeks premature. That's almost certainly curtains for most of the history and geography of the world.

Then there's the childhood bleeding disease that the doctors at first thought was hemophelia but later successfully treated with cortizone therapy.

Then there's the time I had infected tonsils and the time I fell off the cliff and the time in college when I had meningitis. Oh yeah and don't forget last year's dance with thyroid cancer.

Let's see, that's six times in my life where in other times and places I most certainly would have been that many feet under.

Perhaps I'm not a lucky dog. Perhaps I'm of the feline persuasion and I've got three more lives left to burn.