Sarah was 16 and had the misfortune of not only being involved in a motor vehicle accident but also suffered a lacerated left cheek.
At the time I was senior medical student and had talked my way into doing a month long rotation with 2 private physicians who were plastic surgeons.
Sarah, when initially seen by 1 of these surgeons, was placed on the operating table, the wound was anesthetized, and the physician carefully sutured
her wound. He was careful to keep the wound parallel to her skin lines. If, for example, a skin lesion is removed from your forehead, the suture line could be placed vertically or horizontally. When you furrow your brow, the crease lines run horizontally–therefore a horizontal suture line will be much less visible than a vertical one. Every part of our body is covered with skin and all locations have skin lines. In addition, each stitch has to be placed perfectly while using the smallest thread.
A couple of weeks later Sarah came to the office for suture removal. She had kept a bandage over her cheek, not even daring to look at what lay beneath. No teenage girl wants a disfiguring scar on her face. The surgeon removed the bandage, carefully withdrew each suture and held up a mirror. Apprehensively, Sarah looked at her reflection and then burst out in tears. But these were not tears of disappointment–these were tears of joy. “Look how small it is!” she exclaimed. It is impossible to forget that moment of 50 years ago.
Sarah’s experience actually had many moving parts–the local anesthetic which numbed her skin did not leave lasting anesthetic results. The effects wore off in a few hours, as her body metabolized and dissipated the medication. Sensation returned to normal. Her cheek wound did not remain gaping; the injury largely healed over a matter of days, although a scar requires 2 years to fully mature. Chapter 16 “Damage Control” in God’s Human Biology goes into more details concerning the healing mechanisms.
I recently had an eye exam, in preparation for which the nurse applied a local anesthetic into each eye–and it burned! Then drops were applied to dilate my pupils. Within moments the burning had ceased and within hours my corneas were no longer numb. After experiencing blurred vision for hours, the pupil sizes normalized and once again my vision returned to a baseline state. The medication effects “wore off”. This normalization occurred because my system metabolized and eventually eliminated the drugs causing these effects. There is a homeostatic balance of our entire biochemical and physiologic condition that has been designed around a state of health toward which everything is geared to return when disrupted.
Certainly there are events that result in calamities that are not so easily handled: we just cannot compensate for everything. Skin is not designed to be armor resistant to penetration or burning. The immune system can be overwhelmed. Bones can only withstand so much external force before they break. But we are designed such that our physiology resists any efforts to move our biologic needle into the red zone. These protective mechanisms coordinate in an amazing display of efficient repair and restoration.
Consider for a moment how you feel at this very moment. Most readers would say they feel well. That actually means the absence of noxious symptoms-no nausea, no pain, no dizziness, and so on. Upon reflection, I am at a loss to account for this state of well-being. There is no reason we should feel good. With all the complicated biochemical and physiologic activity inside us, the opportunities for noxious complaints to bubble to the surface are almost endless. Feeling well, is a state that is a blessing — there is no reason otherwise that our constant encounters with our external environment and internal gears should allow us to enjoy what is ultimately good health. Our nerves are programmed such that light touch, for example, does not cause pain. The amount of visible light normally encountered, permits our eyes’ pupils to react and the amount of light entering the posterior of the eye is painless. Excluding significant disorders of our GI tract, eating a meal results more in pleasure than discomfort. The sound waves we usually encounter are well tolerated. We are designed to interact with the physical and chemical stimuli of normal environments without discomfort. We take this for granted, but that symbiosis did not need to exist.
We are programed such that our biologic systems wish to return to normalcy if disturbed. I can not be talked out of the belief that there is a grand intelligence that designed everything.