Merely the Patient by Henry Howard Harper

After going hurriedly through a collection of "reports" lying before him on the desk he rendered his opinion in this-wise: The summing up of all the reports -- as far as my examinations had extended -- led to the discovery that my trouble was located in my left kidney!

I was on the point of making some jaunty remark about their having wasted a lot of time and labor in finding out what I had told them at the beginning, when he showed me the X-ray pictures, revealing a condition of the kidney which called for an operation. This discovery having been made in my first examination, all the others seemed a mere waste of time and effort. But I was less disturbed about past events than I was over the prospects of the future. The suggestion of an operation, coming unexpectedly, gave me a queer jolt, not easily described. It seemed more like a bad dream than a reality. Without the remotest idea that any such action would be necessary I had made my plans to return East in a few days; and having felt no pain or inconvenience for more than a month it was impossible to adjust myself to the thought of an operation. A man with a violent toothache has a lessened dread of the dentist; and a griping pain in the midriff or in the appendix quarter mitigates the terror of seeing the doctor; but for a fellow in perfectly good health and spirits to go voluntarily and submit himself to being cut open is quite another matter.