After a week-long vacation turned into a entire month, I felt like Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz, after waking up from her dream. This couldn’t be real, this had to be a dream, a nightmare, but it was true. The doctor in the emergency room had just diagnosed my husband with pancreatitis due to multiple gall stones.

He stayed in the hospital for 13 days while they pushed antibiotics through his veins and removed his gall bladder. My son and I spent our vacation riding the elevator, every morning, to room 825, and then back again with my parents, whom we were visiting in South Florida, every evening. I longed to just click my heels, sorry, no, ruby slippers, only Rainbow flip flops, and chant, “There’s no place like home.”

While they were taking my husband to various CAT scans and ultrasounds, I started doing some thinking. Why are we created with so many parts that we don’t technically need? I decided to do a little research.

We are all born with a gall bladder, which is supposed to help digestion by storing bile. Where is the bile going now that my husband no longer has a place to store it? Has it been sent off to Oz? Basically, it goes exactly where it’s supposed to go - the intestines. By cutting out the “middle man”, in this case, the gall bladder, the bile is just not concentrated. That’s unfortunate for my hubby.

Another useless part of the human anatomy? The appendix. Or is it? Researchers had initially thought it held no function, but now believe that the appendix protects bacteria that are important in the function of the colon. Studies show many deaths linked to infectious diseases, generally of overall healthy patients who have had their appendix removed. So, maybe the appendix isn’t useless after all?

Just picture a child, lying in the hospital bed, eating ice cream continuously and you will know what they just had removed. Tonsils are areas of tissue on both sides of the throat. Something else we were created with, but doctors keep taking from us. They are important parts of our immune system that protect us from infection, but the main reason to have them removed is tonsillitis, which is an infection! Go figure.

Gall bladders, the appendix, tonsils, oh my! I am sure we all know of one, or maybe multiple, people who have had one of these removed. If they cause so much trouble, why do we have them? I don’t think we can ever really get this answered, but know that if you have to get these removed, you are not alone. If doctors decide we really do need them, maybe we can travel down the yellow brick road, to Oz, and ask for our parts back…just like the Tin Man and the Scarecrow did.