When you can no longer be right-wing from Planck's Constant

Surgeon John Roberts had talked
of "an appalling error"
Photo Credit: BBC

Richard A. Yonuger, a rather intelligent young man of the right wing persuasion checked himself into a major teaching hospital in New York last week. What happened next will astound you. The author of "Why We are Right in Iraq", "The Threat of Moderate Islam", "What's Wrong with Welfare" and other books and articles, was fatigued, had no appetite, and experienced nausea and vomiting.

The doctor diagnosed liver disease caused by the Hepatitis A virus which destroyed almost half of the organ. The good news was that it was treatable by surgery. They could remove 50% of the liver and it could regenerate and restructure itself rather quickly. Doing nothing would result in death within three to six months. Three days later he went under surgery. That was last Monday.

Today, Thursday, the doctor thought him well enough to take visitors and so his wife came to see him. "How you feeling sweetheart?" she asked.

Looking very grumpy he gave this tight-lipped reply, "I would feel better if Bush hadn't caused those bombs to go off in Bombay."

"Bush? Honey, the President had nothing to do with that. The reports say it was some student Islamic Militant group." She gave a wrinkled half-smile; she thought perhaps he was joking.

"Yeah but our being in Iraq recruited them, galvanized them.."

"Oh dear, where did you hear such nonsense?" Now she knew he had to be pulling her leg.

"Just came into my had. I see things clearly now. We have to get out of Iraq now, immediately. You Go Murtha Baby! We have to raise minimum wage, institute a national universal health plan paid by the government, we have to raise welfare payments and lower restrictions to get on it, we have to..." His face suddenly turned beet red and looked as if he were about to explode. "If I don't vote for Hillary Clinton in the next 5 minutes I think I'm going to die," he screamed.

His wife couldn't bear to hear anymore and ran from the room, tears streaming down her cheeks. The doctor caught her and spun her to a halt. The doc had a guilty look on his face: "You're wondering what happened to your husband - what changed him into a raving liberal? I'm sorry to have to say this, but a big mistake was made. We will have to put him back for the liver operation. We never removed half of his liver."

She was dumb-struck. "So what happened?"

"Well," the doctor stammered, he knew this revelation was going to blow the hospital malpractice premiums through the roof, "He will have to walk around with an aluminum shield over his head for the rest of his life - it seems we... we accidentally removed half of his brain. During the night - a moonbat squeezed itself in and now we cannot remove it without killing the patient."

I offer this as a cautionary tale with the following advice: If you ever have to have something operated on, make sure you mark the body part of interest with a permanent marker. If you're getting a kidney taken out mark with black "Remove this one" on one side and mark in red "Do NOT remove this kidney" on the other.

the sun - [dead link] - Wrong kidney removed, Excerpt: John Heron was admitted to Ayr Hospital earlier this month after the discovery of a tumour, but doctors botched the operation by removing a healthy kidney instead.

NY Times - Doctor Who Cut Off Wrong Leg Is Defended by Colleagues, Excerpt: A Tampa surgeon who has been widely vilified and ridiculed for mistakenly amputating the wrong leg of a patient on Feb. 20 sought this week to regain both his license to practice medicine and a measure of his once-solid reputation.

By the way, sometimes there are two sides to a story. Read the New York Times piece above then read this version from the Wall Street Journal - A Story That Doesn’t Have a Leg to Stand On, Excerpt: You've probably heard a lot lately about the poor guy in Tampa who went to the hospital to get his leg amputated and woke to find they'd taken off the wrong leg. Thanks to the skill of the litigation lobby in spinning the media, there's also a lot about the case you probably haven't heard.

Somewhat related:

Ring of Gyges - 75 simple questions for liberals, Excerpt: Hat tip to KLo at the Corner on this one.Greg Gutfeld over at the Huffington Post counters Lefty Ellisberg's talking points by proposing 75 of his own. I have culled the best of them and posted them below. For the full list click the link above. Print these out, put them in your pocket, and demand that every liberal you meet answer them.

-Why isn't Air America successful?- Can you come up with one good thing America has done in its entire history?-Is manmade lightning burning the ozone hole?- Can you come up with a single realistic solution for Iraq, other than saying it was a mistake?-Can you advocate any kind of strategy that counters the absolute threat of terrorism?