Appendix
"Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen." (Wittgenstein, Tractatus 6.43)
On Sunday morning I woke up with severe pain on the right side of my abdomen. Half an hour after I woke up I was on the phone with a nurse; one hour after I woke up I was at the emergency room; one hour and five minutes after I woke up I was being examined by a triage nurse; an hour and a half after I woke up I was receiving intravenous morphine and antibiotics; four hours after I woke up I received a CAT scan; five hours after I woke up I was diagnosed with appendicitis; six hours after I woke up I met my surgeon; seven hours after I woke up I was in surgery. (Some of these times may be inaccurate, since once I got on morphine, and especially general anaesthesia, my short-term memory started to fail, and they also took away my watch when preparing for surgery.) Some friends visited me in the hospital on Sunday evening as I was waking up from my general anaesthetic.
The surgeon came back on Monday and discharged me from the hospital; my cousin took me home and I got some rest and some more visitors.
This was my first time being hospitalized, having a CAT scan, receiving general anaesthesia, and receiving morphine or any opioid. So I had a lot of new experiences in a hurry. One other was the dramatic loss of short-term memory as a result of the painkillers. The day I was discharged from the hospital, I could easily remember the beginning of the Iliad from μηνιν αειδε Θεα through to Λητους και Διος υιος, which is exactly as far as I've ever known it. (It would be great to have a version of the old joke about playing the piano after surgery in which I ended up knowing more of the Iliad after surgery.) But in the same conversation, I had to struggle momentarily to remember who had come to visit me in the hospital the night before.
I was extremely impressed with the care I received at St. Luke's Hospital. And I would especially like to thank Praveen for spending his birthday in the hospital with me.
I had been writing a long letter when my hospitalization interrupted me, so I decided to finish it as normal, and then to attach a subsequent page titled APPENDIX describing my hospital experience. You only get to use that joke at most once in a lifetime. I've also been looking, without success, for a joke about the Appendix Vergiliana.
