with Desmond Wilcox
We take visiting for granted, but some journeys are significant, even dramatic.
He's a miracle of surgical achievement and love. He's a Peruvian Indian boy, just 9 years old now but when Ian Jackson, the distinguished plastic surgeon from Scotland, first discovered him, he was an 18-month-old baby - abandoned in a paupers' hospital in Lima. The centre of his face had been destroyed by a malignant disease.
He'd been found in the Amazonian jungle Jackson agreed to attempt the nearly impossible task of reconstructing a face for the boy David. Since then David has undergone more than 50 major operations. There's another 50, at least, ahead of him. Ian Jackson is the man he calls 'Dad', and Marjorie Jackson is the only mother he's ever known. He's been spending winters in Spain because of the vulnerability to cold of newly transplanted tissue. Each summer he travels 'home', to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where Ian Jackson now works - for more operations. Desmond Wilcox went with him.