Dr. Chris Barnard once said: “It is infinitely better to transplant a heart than to bury it to be devoured by worms.” I often wonder what his views would be about the modern medicine of the world in 2022. I read a biography about his life and what a life he lived.
On Saturday 2 December 1967 he was just another surgeon in South Africa of whom very little was known.
On Monday 4 December 1967 he was world renowned.
He once noted that an individual is its brain and not its heart and yet, despite the absolute logic of his statement, humans almost always “feel” with their hearts, they “experience” with their hearts and love is almost always associated with the heart and definitely not the brain. We also love the heart; we also love the brain and the lungs and the…
Had it not been for my very extreme disposition of being squeamish, I was due to follow a career in medicine. Unfortunately, I just have to think about blood before I promptly faint. It is really embarrassing, but I have other talents! I can work magic with embroidery designs.
The stitches liven up when they interact with the material and when I start working a new embroidery range, I have to set my alarm to eat because the excitement and adrenaline almost push and pull me to do just one more design and just one more and before I know it, I have been awake for almost 48 hours, but it feels like a few seconds.
This is exactly what happened during a rainy weekend in June 2021. We were talking about what type of designs we would like to see on our scrubs. It was never going to be something ordinary, there are enough of those designs to last a lifetime.
It all began with a scribbled heart and some other random scribbles and before we can say “heart”, we had artistic anatomy. The first designs were the heart, the brain, and the rib cage. An ophthalmologist sent a message asking us if we have an eye – now that was a test of note, but we now have an artsy eye in the range.
The range has grown to 12 designs. The heart, the brain, the rib cage, the eye, the elbow, the hip, the kidney, the larynx, the lungs, the shoulder, the tooth and the vagina.
The heart is the most popular with the brain coming in at a very close second.
I wonder if Chris Barnard would ever walk the passages of Groote Schuur Hospital in a scrub top with the Artsy Anatomy Heart embroided on the pocket? Luckily no-one needs his say-so to brighten up their scrub collection!