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Trip Down Memory Lane: After 40 Years This Surgeon Finally Retrieved The Time Capsule He Sewed Inside His First Patient

Get ready for a totally awesome look into the past!

Dr. Keith Edwards began his medical career way back in 1977, what now feels like an eternity ago. Luckily, he had enough foresight as a young man to know he’d one day appreciate a glimpse back into what his life was like in the ’70s. And now we all get to witness a totally awesome throwback, 40 years in the making: Dr. Edwards retrieved the time capsule he sewed inside his first patient this morning.

So cool. History FTW!

Inside the cache stapled inside the patient where Dr. Edwards’ career began was a trove of personal artifacts that quickly sent him traveling back in time. From a Neil Young eight-track to a “Vote For Carter” campaign button to an old pair of Chuck Taylors, these peeks into a bygone American era were nearly perfectly preserved aside from blotches of blood and bile that had seeped into the capsule.

Paper-clipped to a Fleetwood Mac concert ticket stub was Thurman Munson’s rookie baseball card, which might fetch a lot of money now, but is more precious for the memories it offers Dr. Edwards after not seeing the light of day from behind the left kidney where it was implanted so many years ago. As if all this weren’t enough, an old girlfriend’s and his initials were still right there on the rib bone he’d carved them onto four decades prior.

Talk about nostalgia overload!

Dr. Edwards couldn’t help but laugh at how corny he looked back then in the Polaroids he excavated from the patient, after spending 20 tense minutes vacuuming out pus from an abscess that formed around the capsule. But the really beautiful part was when Dr. Edwards sewed a new 2017 time capsule back into the patient, even knowing that he will probably not be around when it’s opened in 2057.

Wow, this is an unbelievably cool look into American life circa the ’70s. You have to think: What will the next time capsule ripped out of a human abdomen have in it? All we can say for sure is that we can’t wait to find out!