The past few months have been filled with appointments as she compiled miles’ worth of questions for the surgeon, the anesthesiologist and the rest of the team. They’ve told her they don’t mind. They’ve said they’re impressed, complaining that most patients perilously don’t ask a thing. I wonder if they really know what they’ve gotten into.

While she was in labor with me, my mother (not satisfied with the impressive resumé of the anesthesiologist she was assigned) infamously made him dial his wife, who had received an epidural at his hands, and quizzed her on how skilled the man was. Only then would my mom let him proceed with his job and numb her up. I wish I could say that she’s learned to let up in the past 26 years. But it’s only gotten worse.

And yet, as my mother makes all the necessary preparations on the eve of her surgery (including the delivery of a traction rehabilitation machine and an oh-so-lovely walker-esque portable toilet, overhauling the house and going to confession “just in case”) it’s not so much the act of surgery I ponder as it is the fact that in 2007 we’re still having to replace knees.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly faulting medicine. It’s more evolution I have a problem with. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. The human body is an amazingly wondrous thing. A quick trip to “Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds” exhibit at Discovery Place is enough evidence of that. Just the fact that heart cells can beat on their own is both awe-inspiring and revolting all at the same time.

Overdue improvements
So don’t take what I’m about to say the wrong way. We were created beautifully. However, that was quite some time ago. And while evolution, I believe, has taken care of some fabulous things (hello, expanded brain power, less hair and upright walking, among other things), there are still a few issues I thought would have been taken care of by now. Think about it, if humans were marketed as a product, there’s no way we would thrive in the open market. Consumers expect product upgrades, newer versions with all the kinks worked out. Compared with humans 100 years ago, most of us in the developed world have longer legs and extended lives. Compare that with car models and it’s a joke. You can’t offer a new car model and say, “Well, compared to the car we had 10 years ago, this is a foot longer and is twice as durable.” You need to at least add swanky cup holders or a great sound system. If you ask me, we humans are way overdue for an upgrade.

For example, one should not be able to blow milk, soup or soda out of one’s nose. There should be greater safeguards in place to ensure that I won’t accidentally lose a macaroni noodle down my windpipe. I accidentally sucked a piece of sandwich into my lung once. I thought I was going to die – for weeks. Mucus should not come out of our eyeballs when we’re very sick. I know that eyes, ears, noses and throats all need proper drainage, but that doesn’t mean into each other!

Similarly, while much has been done in the area of hair reduction over the centuries, there is still more to accomplish. Coming from a fair-skinned, dark-haired race of people, I do not need body hair anymore. Honestly. I can live without ever shaving my legs again; and I think my Gillette MACH3Turbo razor would gladly give up the job. I do not need leg hair to keep warm. Same goes for my arm hair. And why in the world do I still have hairy knuckles? How is that in any way helping me? I don’t need it to trap dirt or bacteria or any such nonsense. Evolution, take it away!

And don’t even get me started about the female reproductive system. Let’s just say it shouldn’t be so easy to access a woman’s insides. The fact that a doctor can feel a woman’s organs from the inside is just plain wrong. And the whole birthing process? I’m waiting until evolution makes it possible for us just to spring infants from pouches with all the ease of kangaroos. And why are seahorses still the only males in the animal kingdom carrying eggs around, huh?

I will survive
Back to my mom’s bum knee. These ball-and-socket joints have been around for thousands of years. You’d think that genetic evolution would have improved upon things by now! It’s not like my mom is some hard-working field laborer. (Don’t worry Mom, I know you work your knees off.) My mom isn’t some professional dancer who pounds the floorboards in heels 40 hours a week perfecting her salsa. And yet here she is at 54, with no cartilage of which to speak and barely able to walk down the street anymore. There’s something about the “bone-on-bone” descriptor of her condition that gets me every time, like fingernails on a chalkboard. (Such a simile probably isn’t even apt anymore. Do classrooms even carry chalkboards these days? I’d probably have to say “like the squeak of a marker on white board” to be more current.)

By 2007 you’d think that nature would have taken care of the problem, crafting ever-durable and supremely supple joints to last for millennia. I guess part of the problem comes down to Darwin, doesn’t it? If hairy people with pathetically bad joints stopped reproducing there it would be: problem solved. Or at least some problems solved. If only we genetically flawed people weren’t so darn cute.

Speaking of solving problems, last weekend’s 24 Hours of Booty event had me thinking – as it always does – about cancer and the evolution of disease. Humans have been dying of cancer for as long as we’ve been around. The recent identification of Hatshepsut, Egypt’s most powerful queen who took on the title and role of pharaoh, showed that she died of bone cancer. We’re talking 15th century B.C. I know great strides have been made in finding a cure recently, but maybe if the Egyptians had spent a little less time building pyramids and a little more time in the laboratory we’d be a little farther along by now, don’t you think? Then again, who am I to judge? I’m primarily of German-Irish descent, two nations that have simply swilled alcohol for centuries. And again, who am I to say that a proper pint can’t cure what ails you.

Trading in parts
And so, as Mama White heads off to the hospital, these are the thoughts that will float through my head as I bide my time in the waiting room. Since evolution seems a little behind, I’m putting my stock in the bionic knee as far as joints go. Mine are killing me and I’m only 26. I have no problem trading my cartilage and bone for Terminator-strength titanium. And if they could give me a couple inches, or Inspector Gadget “go, go gadget leg” capabilities, that would be even better.