Nietzsche, Tractors and Limits

Last year a cardiac surgeon sawed open my sternum (breastbone) from top to bottom. This is called a median sternotomy. He then undertook open heart surgery, whilst a vascular surgeon worked on my vena cava. After this surgery was completed, the two halves of my sternum were joined with wire sutures (titanium, I believe) to hold them together so it could heal. Needless to say, my sternum was extremely sore for a good six months as the bone was growing back together.

There is now a long white scar that runs down the centre of my chest. Underneath it are a series of small ridges and little lumps. These are the wire sutures. Here my chest is still very sensitive to touch. My GP told me that full healing takes around two years. Little by little, the bone grows over the wire sutures and incorporates these into the sternum. When that process is complete, he said, my breastbone will be stronger than before.

Recently, I related this to a farmer friend of mine. He nodded and pointed to a welded repair on his tractor, telling me that the weld itself became the strongest part of two pieces of metal after they had been fused together.

Then I thought about Nietzsche’s infamous dictum - 'what does not kill me makes me stronger.' Not because I see any of this experience as heroic. But because we normally live within safe limits and when we are tested to the very edge of our limits, we either fail or come back stronger.