Medicine: First Square Meal

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The day-old boy on the operating table was a normal, squalling, blue-eyed infant except for one thing: he had been born without an esophagus. Surgeons cut into the abdomen, made an opening in the stomach wall so that the baby could be fed by tube. Then they sat back and hoped for the best.

That was 16 years ago. Ever since, young Robert Linsig of Marlboro, N.Y. has lived by grace of his rubber tube. Like other children, he learned to chew his own food, but instead of being able to swallow, he had to spoon it into the tube. Robert never let it get him down. He grew up healthy and active, went to school, scrapped with the other kids, and learned to play the bell-lyra in the Marlboro Central High School band.

Five years ago, when Robert was eleven, surgeons at Manhattan's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center attempted a rare operation to give him an esophagus. In the first stage, a two-foot piece of his intestine was taken out and joined to the stomach; the free end of the intestine was led up toward the throat. In the second phase, a few days later, the free end was to be joined to the stub of esophagus that Robert was born with. But when a chest incision was made, the free end could not be found. Robert continued with his rubber tube.

A few weeks ago, Robert felt a tightening in his chest whenever he took water through his tube. The doctors at Columbia decided on a second operation. This time there were no slipups. There, curled in his chest, was the free end of the makeshift esophagus, still healthy and unshriveled. After six hours in the operating room, Robert was wheeled out with a working esophagus. Last week he swallowed the first home-cooked square meal of his life: turkey and trimmings topped off with ice cream and cake.

How did it feel to swallow? Robert could not answer. "There are some things," his mother said, "you just can't put into words."