Making The World Safe (For Tyrants)
How well-meaning but hopelessly ignorant and naïve people are working hard to bring back concentration camps and mass executions
My recovery from a recent chest surgery has been complicated by repeated post-operative infections and from the fact that, as my surgeon put it, “we don’t see many people like you with wounds like this.” What this meant was that after digging all the unwanted things out of my chest he had to stretch my skin across a void and close it with more stitches than would normally be required. Alas, skin doesn’t do well when unsupported by anything underneath it. This problem was compounded by the fact that despite my advanced age I have sizeable pectoral muscles and only 11% body fat. So not only was the skin unsupported; it was also tugged upon every time I moved in my sleep. Today I’m walking around with a gap across my sternum more than an inch wide and quarter of an inch deep, with raw tissue exposed to the world. Not surprisingly, recurrent infection is a problem despite the wound being cleaned, sterilized, packed, and re-dressed every three days by the solicitous people at the hospital with whom I’ve now become very familiar, so I’m off-again on-again with the antibiotics.
