"First we insert a needle into the breast. Then we insert a hooked wire through the center of the needle into the breast. The hook is there in order that the wire cannot pull out. After that we compress the breast for three minute durations and take several mammograms and THEN we sedate you ...", the breast surgeon was explaining. "I'm sorry I asked, please don't go on", I quickly interrupted.
Well it is done now and I'm glad. But honestly I could not believe that this type of procedure would be state-of-the-art in the health care of the twenty first century. As a fellow patient commented as we waited for our "procedures", if men had to have their penises skewered and routinely squashed in vices there'd be a funding for better techniques developed in a New York minute.
One has to wonder about the medical profession. It doesn't seem to matter what country you are in. Like lawyers they are the same the world over.
This was my first real experience of the medical system in the US and on reflection I have to say it isn't much different (the experience that is) than in OZ. The health care professionals I came into contact with could have been in either country. And the minimizing of time spent in hospital is now a feature of Australian health care, I am led to understand. The only real difference was that I was carded (picture ID) on the way in to the hospital. But that is New York, post 9-11.
So what's the mood in New York this week leading up to the anniversary? I've spent the last few days in bed so my impressions are limited to the web and television. It looks like there'll be an over-saturation on telly of 9-11-related events. And it'll no doubt also be an opportunity for the "you-all-deserve-it people" to harangue us New Yorkers with the usual platitudes. I noticed an article in the Melbourne Age quoted an Australian New Yorker explaining that the US press only reported the US side at the time of the attacks. Really? Is there another one?
But let us hope that most people, will be more sensitive to us New Yorkers and realise that there IS no other side of the story when mass murder is involved.
This week's Letter from New York is short for obvious reasons. But as it is my last letter before 9/11/2002 I'd like to take this chance to remember last year as a New Yorker, and as a citizen of both Australia and America.
To quote
Simon Crean (Leader of the Opposition, Australian Parliament) on the significance of 9-11:
"Its significance for the families of the victims.
Its significance in steeling our determination to stand together and fight the war on terror.
Its significance in unifying the world against the premeditated and cowardly attack on it.
The fact that the September 11 attack happened in New York is also significant.
It's the greatest city in the most powerful nation. The place people all over the world go to to realize their dreams.
For that reason, the attack on September 11 was an attack on freedom and liberty everywhere.
It was an attack on the whole world.
The senseless killing of people going about their ordinary daily routine horrified all right thinking people".
Simon Crean 31st August 2002. Full transcript at http://www.alp.org.au/media/0802/20002006.html.
Kate Juliff
New York
September 2002