Surgery: a metaphor

[desperance]

What's the surgical word for when you put something in, rather than cutting something out?

It's a most unusual procedure in this office, which is why I don't know the word, but I am embarked upon it. The patient is anaesthetised, and opened up; slowly, slowly we sew in the new matter...

Or in other words, I figured out what's wrong with this story. The place I'd paused, what I thought was a pause before we leaped forward into the heart of the piece, turns out to be the end of it. What I thought was going to be a loaf turns out to be a slice: which means that we have to cut that slice in half and insert meat, to make a sammich of it. This is not complicated, just difficult to do. It needs dexterity, and I'm all thumbs.

The beautiful boy whore turns out to be oh, so much more: a deliberate self-sacrifice, not an incidental victim. Surabaya Johnnie perhaps may be the victim, in so far as there is one, unlikely as it seems. His window is also broken. And the compass, the right compass: what of that...?

Onward and upward. Into a stiff wind, as it happens.

Comments

[metafrantic.livejournal.com]

Implant?

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Or prosthesis, if it's artificial.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I once heard a woman writer with a show-off vocabulary insisting that it wasn't ... prosthetic - which only made the point that actually it was.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Looks like "imnplant" is the best you're going to get, which is rather plain and dull.

This might be useful: http://www.stenospeed.com/soundfiles/wordlists/medsuffix.html

[desperance.livejournal.com]

That? Is very useful, and worth hanging on to. Thank you!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Also, I note it doesn't offer a word for "surgical insertion"...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

"Implanting". As in "implanting a pacemaker", "implanting a heart stent," "implanting an RFID tracking chip", "implanting a remote-controlled brain bomb," or so forth.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ye-es. It's certainly what everyone says. I just want there to be a formal Latinate medical term, a suffix like -ectomy for surgical removal. That there doesn't seem to be one I find interesting, as tending to confirm my suspicion that the process is all too new: that traditional doctoring has not tended to include surgical additions. Just as my own process tends not to include the addition of new material: I'm much more comfortable cutting. Like any old barber-surgeon, I guess...

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think 'intome' sounds right ... can't think why!

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

Depending on exactly what you are doing it could be implanting or grafting.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

I was going to go with grafting, if implanting wasn't satisfactory.

I think -plasty is applicable, but what comes before it would vary.

Verboplasty?

[tanngrisnir.livejournal.com]

"-plasty" doesn't necessarily mean insertion of something, though.

[kazdreamer.livejournal.com]

I seriously need to get glasses... I just read your post's title as: Sugary: a metaphor. I was searching for a metaphor for sugar or sweet things, and got really confused. *sigh* I am getting my eyes tested next week... Age - I has it.

Also, isn't it your birthday soon? :)

[(Anonymous)]

-endomy ?

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

Can I insert a congratulations on reaching the Age of Learning here? (You are L, aren't you and can put those yellow plates on a car? Soon you'll be P and - in Canberra - not allowed a single drink before you lose license points. Such is the peril of age - younger folk can drink with no concerns at all.)

happy Birthday!