Our very good neighbour Mohindar just has no luck whatever when it comes to surgical interventions. We've known him for well over two decades and during that time he has undergone a number of surgeries, each one of which has been an absolute failure for him. He has been unable to keep a job, and as a result unemployed for most of the time we've known him. Little wonder that he suffers from deep-seated depression.

You'd never know it from his outward manner, always cheerful and open, the friendliest and most amicable person imaginable, interested in his neighbours, and always ready to be helpful should the occasion arise. His demeanour is so engaging it's difficult not to like the man. His emotional attachment to his family is more than readily apparent; we watched as his and Rajinder's very young children -- infants when we first knew them -- grew into responsible adults whose fierce loyalty to their parents was unquestioned and which they continue to evince as the years go by.

When he was younger he had somehow wrenched one of his shoulders and suffered immeasurable pain. Members of his extended family are in the medical profession and no doubt they assured him that there was treatment available that would put an end to his suffering and allow him to live a normal life. That was the time of the first surgery. His recovery was slow and when it was complete, it came with the realization that nothing had changed. That led to a repeat of the original surgery, and when his recovery, even slower the second time around, was done with, he became resigned to the reality that nothing much had changed.

Although he wasn't able to work, that didn't stop him from attempting and succeeding to do many quite difficult home improvement jobs he did around their house, about six dwellings north of ours. He and my husband had in common among other things, a deep interest in doing home improvement projects on their own. We're older than the Rakhras, and Rajinder is still gainfully working in a supervisory position with the federal government.  Mohindar also had the help of his university-attending obliging son in any enterprise he undertook, needless to say. The result of that is that Imran will be more than capable of performing both mundane and more complex jobs around the house when he is prepared to take on a home of his own.

About four months ago Mohindar decided it was time to do something about his enlarged prostate. It's a condition that is so common to the majority of older men that it's a wonder surgical techniques haven't shot past the current benchmark. If you live in Toronto you have the choice of conventional surgery or "blue-light" laser treatment; less surgically invasive, and a faster recovery. Not in good old Ottawa, though, despite our hospitals' excellence in some major areas of health care, like heart and cancer.

So Mohindar had his surgery and for some misbegotten reason post-surgery he hadn't been prescribed an antibiotic (yes, everyone knows that antibiotics have been over-prescribed leading to the current problem of antibiotic-resistant microbes bedevilling hospitals, but in the instance of an older patient recovering from invasive surgery it should be routinely prescribed) and he succumbed to a pretty awful infection that turned out to be extremely difficult to treat.

His recovery has been beyond slow; it has aged him and made it difficult for him to do ordinary things in life, let alone walk about at length in comfort. The infection is still being treated, and until it's been successfully eradicated his recovery from that fairly pedestrian surgery will continue to be longer and more intrusive to his life than it should have been.