Surgeons at a leading research hospital in Ukraine have carried out the world’s first transplant of a human head, hailing it as a major breakthrough for medical science and a ‘partial success’.
In an operation lasting over 19 hours, two teams successfully removed the intact head of 55 year old artisan carpenter Bogdan Pasternak and attached it to the muscular young body of actor Olek Zalenko, tragically killed while rehearsing a blindfolded Samurai fight scene at the Kiev Centre for Drama. Apparently it was only the quick thinking of Olek’s fellow thespians in applying two bags of frozen garden peas to the wound and rushing his fresh torso to hospital that made the procedure possible.
Mr Pasternak had complained for years that he hated his 270kg body, a view shared by his 21 year old wife. She saw an appeal for participants for the transplant scheme in a newsagent’s window and signed him up as a birthday surprise. When he received the call that a suitable body was available he seized the moment.
Unfortunately the actor’s body, wrapped tightly in a plastic body bag up to the exposed neck, was attached back to front and the doctors felt it too risky to attempt a reversal. However, the surgeons believe they successfully connected up most of the many blood vessels and nerves involved. One of the nurses present reportedly told a local newspaper that there were ‘quite a few wires and tube things left dangling from the head’ and that she was told to ‘just tie them together as best you can.’
Mr Pasternak sounded optimistic when we spoke to him by telephone last night, recovering at home three months after the operation. When we asked him how he was feeling he said: ‘Wife say body good, but not good view for me when look in mirror. Also, right arm do what I tell left foot.’
Mrs Pasternak sounded frustrated with the outcome. ‘It not right,’ she complained. ‘Now we must buy second TV and I helping always Bogdan go pee pee cos he not so good shot.’
I find this typical of the attitude of medical science and modern day surgeons. To just leave this chap with an old head on a relatively new body and to fit it the wrong way round. The least they could have done is to turn his feet round so that he would know whether he was coming or going!
Other than that I refuse to comment as this whole post leaves it self open to so many thoughts and innuendos we would need a whole new page to write them all,
Well please feel free!
Unfortunately the future of this poor gentleman brings to mind a little ditty that was often rendered with great gusto by me and three chums whilst on our Saturday drive to East Sussex to seek out an extra half hour of drinking might time. It was sung by Colin Andy myself and our old chum Woomph. Woomph bless him used to do most of the driving because he was tone deaf and to drunk to sing. It had something to do with seagulls and a lighthouse and a fellow name of Hunt but for the life of me I can’t remember the rest of the words.