The Serkin I Never Knew

To my rage I find that the rest of the Serkin story got eaten by the computer despite the fact that I "saved" it.

Serkin has performed surgery five times on my feet.  Two Morton's neuromas, two hammertoes and a bilateral bunionectomy,   He was extremely fussy after each procedure and forced Richie to make me stay in the car while he came up to the office, got a wheelchair and went back to the car to get me then take me back and return the wheelchair.  He always called  the next day and several days after  any surgery and I told Richie that if we didn't look out, he'd be over here making me chicken soup!  After checking to make sure that I was sleeping with the injured foot/feet in a cardboard box in the bed. 

But he really outdid himself in July, 1993, when my mother died, aged 87, of Parkinson's in Manhattan, KS, four days post-op on the bunionectomy.

I called his office to cancel an appointment and told the receptionist why.  Five minutes later, our phone rang and it was Serkin, half hysterical.

"No, no - you can't go to your mother's funeral - flying!  You could get a blood clot and die!  No, no!"

I pointed out that IT WAS MY MOTHER mildly enough, but he reiterated, "No - your mother wouldn't want you to come!  She wouldn't want anything should happen to you!" 

Privately I thought this was somewhat debatable, but ... after protracted negotiations that made Israel-Palestine peace deals look like sandbox squabbling, he very reluctantly agreed to let me go on condition that I use a wheelchair at all three airports and make sure I got a seat where I could put my feet up against the wall. 

As I stood (the wheelchair would have dumped me out on my butt) graveside in the rough ground of the little country cemetery, amidst leftover clods of dirt from the hole,  I grinned to myself; delighted that Serkin would never know,