ShawneeDispatch.com

Most people have come to terms with this truism before they rack up too many miles, so to speak, but it bears repeating: Sometimes life just isn’t fair.

The other day the wife and I were on some errand when I heard a report on the news that reinforced this idea, as if any reinforcement were needed. I can’t even remember right now what it was (I asked her, and she doesn’t remember either.)

“Them that has, gets,” I said at the time.

I mention this only because it’s such a common occurrence. Look at the headlines or watch the news any day and you’ll probably find several stories that impress you with life’s general unfairness.

Extravagant bonuses for the financial wizards whose swashbuckling tactics with other folks’ money got the economy in such a mess would be one candidate, I’ll bet.

Certainly there are others. I almost hate to mention them because we’re cruising along in a lighter vein here, but obviously natural disasters and tragedies are prime examples. It’s pretty rare that folks run afoul of the fates or whatever because of something they did; usually it’s just because they had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

My brother-in-law had reason to ponder life’s unfairness this past week.

“Bud,” as everybody calls him, is my wife’s younger brother. (His real name is George, but for as long as I’ve known him, everyone in the family has called him Bud. I suppose initially this was to distinguish him from his father, whose name also was George. But I digress.)

Bud, who is 60, had open-heart surgery last Wednesday. Now, anyone who knows anything at all about the violence that surgeons with the best of all possible intentions can visit upon the human body knows that this is a BIG DEAL.

I put that in capital letters for a reason. From where I sit, except for trauma surgery, it’s about as drastic or dramatic as anything that happens in a hospital. I mean, they take a souped-up, slicked-down version of the circular saw that I use to cut up plywood in my garage and use it to saw through your sternum, or breastbone, and lay open your chest so they can reach in and work their wonders on your heart. Nurses who care for cardiac patients talk about “cracking open” a patient’s chest with the nonchalance the uninitiated might use to discuss cracking open a walnut.

In Bud’s case, they bypassed an occluded vessel that was restricting the flow of blood to his heart. Doing this increased his cardiac output (a measure of the heart’s effectiveness) from 40 percent to normal.

The family members who have watched over him in this ordeal have been cheered by his response to the surgery and the excellent care that he has received. (This is no mean feat. These people are not easily impressed. My wife, his sister, just retired as director of nursing at a major area hospital; his son is a captain of paramedics for an area fire department.)

Bud, however, does have one complaint. He holds open his surgical gown and looks down at his chest with an expression of glum disappointment. His chest is more or less clean. Unlike the old days, his incision was stuck together with a space-age adhesive. He sprays it every day with an antibacterial gel. His only dressing is a small plaster used to cover the hole left by a drainage tube that was removed the day after his surgery.

“It don’t seem fair,” he says, shaking his head. “When John Wayne got shot with an arrow they fixed him up with a big bandage. They cut into my heart, and all I got is a Band-Aid.”

He’s got a point. After all that trauma, it seems like a guy ought to get a proper bandage.

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