out of step

Belvedere Jehosophat - Saturday, 4 November 2006 - 11:27:57 - print it raw

five to one, baby, one in five

The word is debridement. Debridement*: Surgical excision of dead, devitalized, or contaminated tissue and removal of foreign matter from a wound.
The surgical excision of dead, devitalized, or contaminated tissue and removal of foreign matter from a wound.

The ocean in this instance was the wound, wounded and in need of treatment, and ocean life, whales, penguins, sea lions, fish (including pilchards), sea anemones, dolphins, etc, the list is endless, was the dead, contaminated tissue that had to be removed.

(I stress "had" because there must not be any argument as to the necessity and urgency of this particular operation.)

And so it was that this festering, dying life — well, in reality, the individual components of which it consisted — was removed in its tens and its tens of tens and its tens of tens of tens.

Of course, whilst the discovery of life and its subsequent removal was — as they say in the medical profession (and to expand this metaphor further) — caught before it had time to spread, the damage was such that the ocean would be forced into an extended period of convalescence; these sorts of wounds never heal well, unfortunately. How do you, after all, cauterise an incision that is predominately wet or stitch an opening that is permeable?

The job was done and the ocean was saved. We feel, though, all of us do: the blubber of the whale a particularly wanting salve for the pain endured. Teeming with life is not a healthy way to be.

*debridement. (n.d.). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved November 04, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=debridement

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