Kenneth R. Madsen, Salt Lake City, Utah: an interview by Winston Erickson, February 5 - 8, 2001: Saving the legacy tape no. 178 to 182

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ETH R. MADSEN The nurse, whose hand I got to hold, was Agnes. I have forgott n h r la t nam I didn't think I ever would. It was her first time-she was a new nurse, an operating n nur this was the first time she had been in the operating room and she was as scared a I wa . WIN: You were comforting her, huh? KEN: I can't say I was really scared. I knew it had to be done. I mean I understood that it had to be done and why it had to be done that way. I had to be able to tell them whenever a nerve-a branch nerve, or the main nerve-responded to being interfered with by pain. What they would do is touch with electric shock and if you felt the shock they knew that they were back at living nerve tissue. They had explained all of that to me and they told me not to worry because before the operation was over I would pass out, everybody did. And the minute they told me I would pass out-and that everybody did-I can tell you I wouldn't have passed out. I'd have died first and I didn't. WIN: You were going to show them, huh? KEN: Well, it's just my stubbornness. I have to experience everything that I experience. That doesn't make sense I guess, but I have to totally experience every opportunity I have to have a new experience and, as I say, the operation took five and a half hours. I didn't have to go into the recovery room because I wasn't under an anesthetic. I was just taken back to my private room and, from then on, until I left the hospital, the nurse that had let me hold her hand came down to my room and, as soon as I was able to, I would get in a wheelchair, and she would take me for a ride around the hospital as the weather got better outside. We had a clear understanding. She was engaged-although she couldn't wear her engagement ring as a nurse-to a young man who was 69