Who or what is India’s appendix: Totally useless but potentially fatal to the system?

‘Last week, all the phobias got together for a rave party in my head’

Common sense dictates we should all be grateful for the benefits of modern medicine. We worship doctors, adore vaccines, and judge a country’s development status by its per capita numbers of doctors, hospitals and injections.

All this I recognise in the abstract. But at the visceral level — pun intended — I fear hospitals, dislike doctors, and abhor whatever it is surgeons do behind closed doors. In addition to being borderline nosocomephobic, I’m mildly iatrophobic, reasonably tomophobic, and acutely trypanophobic. Last week, all these phobias got together for a rave party in my head when I learned Kattabomman must undergo emergency surgery.

When he complained of tummy ache, we first thought it was an excuse to avoid his meals and binge on mangoes and ice cream. But the pain got worse, and an ultrasound revealed acute appendicitis.

“We must operate ASAP to remove his appendix,” said his paediatrician.

I was stunned. “You want to cut open a five-year-old and take out an organ?”

“It’s a useless organ,” she said. “And it’s threatening his entire system.”

“There must be other ways,” Wife said. “Can’t this be resolved through medicines?