A surgeon never retires, he simply fades away to glory

For a long time, many of our holidays were tagged to Rotary commitments and surgery meetings. To celebrate my retirement from surgery, Marie and I decided to make some radical changes.

We wanted to take a holiday, with no strings attached, however close the string was tied to other facets of my life.

While we were at it, we also made another significant variation. During the time I worked as a surgeon, I voluntarily restricted my holidays, especially those out of the country to a couple of weeks. Being in a single-handed practice, I considered it wrong to “abandon” my patients for longer.

Happily, that constraint does not exist now and so we planned to be away for much longer. In fact, this argument was used by Marie, our daughter, and our son when they were persuading me to retire when I exceeded by a large margin my Biblical span of three score and ten.

They thought that I had given enough time to surgery and it was only appropriate that I devoted the twilight of my life to the family. As I told them in a light vein, in John Githongo’s language, they were telling me, “it is our turn to eat now!”

So there was Marie and me, poring over many holiday brochures to find one to suit our new orientation.

Already visited 109 countries

Without bragging, I must add that having already visited 109 countries on various assignments, it was not easy to find a “virgin” land where we had not been before.

Ultimately we settled on a holiday by Lake Como, in northern Italy. Though we had visited more traditional places in the country like Rome, Venice, Pisa and Florence, we had missed out on what is considered to be one of the most beautiful lakes in the world.

Another attraction of the selected package was that we stayed in a five star hotel, facing the lake for the full duration of our holiday but there were daily sight-seeing excursions to different parts of Italy and nearby Switzerland.

All the visits were to attractive spots but there were two outstanding ones, which I will share with my readers. One was the Bernina Express, which took us through the Alps to the ski resort of St Moritz in Switzerland.

The 100-year-old railway line is 122km long and negotiates 55 tunnels, 196 bridges and climbs to an altitude of 7,000ft. It is a feat of technology, combining the best of British engineering, Swiss precision and Italian labour.

The train and the whole landscape through which it travels have been declared a world heritage site — in motion.

On our journey, we saw many cathedrals, castles, waterfalls forming beautiful rainbows on the mountain slopes, wild valleys and glaciers — all in all, a heavenly sight. It was a constantly changing panorama, depicting a charming mixture of human skill and natural beauty.

On reaching St Moritz, 6,000ft above sea level, we strolled in the town and visited the small cathedral and the main square, typical of all lovely Swiss towns. Its jet set lifestyle, array of luxury hotels and attractive mix of the old world and modern facilities, make St Moritz one of the most desirable tourist and skiing destinations in the world. It also has stables to breed horses for racing tycoons.

While strolling there, I could not help nostalgically remembering my previous visit in January 1977, to present the hospital budget to the Aga Khan when I was the executive director of his hospital in Nairobi from 1975 to 1978.

He used to go there for skiing during the winter months and the budget meetings, timed for the beginning of the year, were held while he was on holiday. I remembered the chairmen of the hospital board and the finance committee and myself wading through slippery snow, with spiked shoes and wearing heavy woolen coats and caps to combat the cold.

I also visualised myself going up the lift to the restaurant on top of the snow-covered mountains for lunch in the warm glass restaurant and watching the skiers gliding down the snow, glistening in the bright sun.

The other excursion was a visit to Villa del Balbianello, which has a history of immense human interest. Perched on the highest point of the peninsula, sitting squarely on the edge of Lake Como, the villa was built in the last years of 1700s for Cardinal Durini of Milan.

When he died in 1797, the place was inherited by his nephew. After many changes of ownership, it was finally owned by Guido Manzoni, a Milanese businessman and a fervent collector and dedicated explorer. He died on October 11, 1988 at the early age of 60 from a heart attack, presumably brought on by his heavy smoking.

Having died without an heir, in accordance with his will, he was buried in the grounds of the villa and the whole property was left to FAI — Fondo Ambiente Italiono, a non-profit foundation established in 1975 to safeguard Italy’s artistic and natural heritage. Manzoni stipulated that the villa would never be sold and would be preserved as a museum.

A tour of the villa was on our schedule and we found that the interior of the villa, which extends over several levels, is decorated harmoniously with English and French furniture from 18th and 19th century, precious tapestries and paintings, Mayan terracotta figures, oriental carpets, Italian lamps and chandeliers.

Among the magnificent rooms, one was the museum, where Manzoni had scrupulously collected and catalogued his travel memoirs, art pieces and souvenirs of the famous expeditions he participated in.

The most notable were two, a successful one to the north pole in 1971 and an unsuccessful one to Mount Everest in 1973. Apparently, he had to abandon the climb short of the summit because of his poor chest.

The smoking room

Amongst the vast collection, we saw rare and ancient objects from lost African civilisations like the Dan and Dogon masks. Other parts of the house shown to us were the map room, music room and a fine library containing 4,000 volumes, mostly on geography and travel.

One fascinating room, to which as a surgeon, I attributed his death to, was called the Smoking Room, where all his pipes were laid out in their mortal glory.

In the final phase of her commentary, our tour guide, a young university female student, said. “Manzoni left two properties abroad, one in Mexico and the other in Kenya.”

Our ears pricked at the latter information and Marie darted the natural question. “Where in Kenya?” As the young woman wore a puzzled expression on her face as to why anybody would ask a question like that, Marie explained. “I am asking because we come from Kenya.”

The tour guide replied. “In Nanyuki and it was left for the benefit of the smallest tribe in the country!”

“Do you mean the El Molo tribe living near Lake Turkana?” I asked.

“I think so,” replied the young woman, sounding unsure.

Two interesting things happened while we were touring the historical site. The grounds of the villa are luxuriant but steep and irregular, so while I  explored the garden and visited the grave of Monzino, Marie sat on a bench on the way to the jetty where our boat was anchored.

I thought there was only one way to the jetty until on the way back I got hopelessly lost and could not find Marie.

As I was desperately looking for her, I came across an American couple, who were in our party. Looking at my panic-stricken face, he asked in his typical American drawl. “Are you alright?”

“I am not.” I lamented. “I have lost my wife.”

Looking back to make sure that his wife was out of hearing range, he replied. “You can have mine!”

Eventually, I did locate Marie and we made our way to the boat, looking red-faced as we were the last ones to board.

On landing, we were taken to a nearby trattoria for lunch, where I was suddenly called out of my retirement.

One of the widows in our group, a Mrs Clarke from York, in trying to grab a chair in the shade, lost her balance, fell on a concrete step and split her forehead. Seeing the blood gushing out of a ruptured vein, our tour manager yelled. “Is there a doctor in the house?”

Instinctively, I rushed to the scene of the accident, pressed the bleeding wound with my handkerchief and tied it with Marie’s scarf. My surgically observant eyes also noticed that her wrist had developed the well known “dinner fork” deformity, suggestive of Colles’ fracture, named after the Irish surgeon who described it first.

Soon the ambulance arrived and as the stretcher carrying the patient was put in, Marie saw the fear-stricken face of Mrs Clarke, at being shipped alone in a strange country and silently bid me to accompany her.

I was very impressed by the emergency services of the hospital, where her wound was quickly stitched and the bleeding stopped. Her wrist was X-rayed and the fracture was confirmed. Luckily, there was no gross displacement and so it did not need reduction under general anaesthesia and was put in a plaster cast.

The final surprise came when she went to pay. Looking at her papers, the cashier said. “To promote our tourism, we don’t charge our visitors for emergency outpatient services!”

On our drive back to the hotel, I remembered two statements I had often heard.  “Once a doctor, always a doctor”. The other “A surgeon never retires unless retired by God Almighty!”