Unnatural Acts...

...no, not that. We do not do that sort of endless and futile controversy in St. Boniface and environs. Much to be said on both sides and most of it best left unsaid, is my firm and unwavering sentiment.

But if not Biblical or other injunctions on the morality - or not - of certain sexualised practices, to what then am I referring in speaking of an 'unnatural' act?

'Tis this plain and entire. No man should ever be awake, conscious and fully alert in an operating theatre. One excepts, of course, from this general injunction the surgeon, the anaesthetist, the nurses and all general ushers-in and swabbers-out. Their full, undivided and spot-on attention is naturally both required and expected.

What is, though, unnatural is for the patient not to be utterly zonked and out of it for the duration. From the perspective of the medical crew, a totally comatose patient must be a boon and blessing both. No leaping screaming off the table when the local anaesthetic fails to do its appointed thing. No awkward questions such as: "Sister, you have just said to the sawbones currently deep inside my leg 'It's not working is it?' Can I take it from your remarks that you are doubting the efficacy of the whole show?" No generalised and off-putting chuntering about anything and everything in a vain attempt to allay the growing sense of foreboding and utter terror.

Just restful and inert peace and silence in which to carry sawing, hewing, hacking and sewing to one's heart's content, without let, hindrance or other intrusion and interference from the person being so sawn, hewed, hacked and sewed. (You try keeping still and silent in such circs. Can't be done I assure you.)

They say that when you wake from a general anaesthetic the pain you experience is the very pain you would have felt had you not been unconscious at the time of sawing etc., etc. That is as maybe, but if on the other hand you have been totally with it throughout, it is most certain that not only do you cop the pain when the local wears off as eventually it must, but also you are left seared and scarred by every pounding moment of wretched memory.

Tell me that is within the order of nature and I'm decamping to Sodom and environs forthwith. They do things differently there I am told, and so long as one of the differences is not forcing people to experience their own surgery anything else can take care of itself.