I went to the otolaryngologist this morning for a consult, to see if taking a Roto-Rooter to my nose won’t fix some of my apnea and breathing issues (spoiler: it almost certainly will, and in an outpatient procedure at that). But one of the things she did was put the scope up my nose (after a generous squirting of Lidocaine first) and do some inspection, which I could follow on the screen overhead.
She stopped and looked at something and said “You had your adenoids out with your tonsillectomy.” I affirmed I had, and she said “I thought so, you can see the scarring here and here.”
And I looked, and saw for the first time some forty-year-old scars I never knew I had, from an operation performed two thousand miles away in a hospital that was torn down over thirty years ago.
There’s a lot there to unpack.