WHY I AM NOT A SURGEON
I visit my friend Hadley
who is opening up some
fellow on a clean table. She
removes objects of different
shades and plinks them
into stainless steel cups.
She dictates Latin names
for clinicians in white
who nod, perilously
near to fainting. I do.
She gets poetic, telling
how she chose to chop
down one big vein and
spare the other. She is
justifying to herself
the choosing of that leg less
cut upon to cut upon.
She later names her paper
The Vein Less Travelled,
and asks me please
to scan for content
and for punctuation.
– Charles Brady
This little bit of writing may be boring to those of you who are healthy and young and spry and are absolutely certain that you will never encounter those ailments that make some fellows gimpy-legged or make some old codgers (whom you will NEVER BE) cough an awful lot. And you are pretty sure your heart and lungs and knees and back will last you a good long ninety years or more.
This is for the other folks – maybe for those who have not had doctors on call or hospitals around the corner with pretty nurses, starched sheets and machines to put you back together when you go over cliffs.
I have to get a little personal because I am older than you and because I was reared in a place and at a time where one’s first experience with the medical profession may have been when he stood in line in Basic Training while some guys stuck needles in his arms! I will explain:
A few years ago, after my blood pressure kept rising and I was not as spry as I would like when walking uphill, my UCSF Primary Care doctor sent me up the Parnassus Hill for a Stress Test.
The treadmill started and all was fine, then it sped up and all of a sudden bells and whistles, and the nurses went scrambling! They helped me off and jammed an aspirin under my tongue then had me lie down until the hastily summoned specialist had arrived.
Doctors huddled then wheeled me down for tests. Within an hour a Cardiologist
informed me that all heart’s arteries were blocked completely and wondered how I was still lying there and pretending to be alive! He said I would have triple by-pass surgery beginning at 5 AM.
That gave my wife to get here (from Monterey), and my older son from San Jose.
(My other son arrived from Denver before I was wheeled back up next day,)
Contrast – a few years ago. In 1956, my father, a member of the US Air Force, had a heart attack at his duty station in Tennessee. He was taken to the hospital, given medication “to calm him down” then began a treatment of nitro glycerin. essentially that was it because there was very little to be done back then.
My father got better and went back to work. A few weeks later he had a mild attack and was continued on Nitro Glycerin. A year later he died of a massive attack. My father had the best care and he had caring physicians and nurses
As I am writing this (in late September, because we are going to be a long road trip throughout October), there is another Healthcare battle brewing throughout the country. I think that battle it going to last a while, but I have lived long enough to see miraculous medical advances, some of which have no doubt extended the life of one appreciative gentleman of the South. Because I have two hard-earned health providers, I can rest a bit easier than many in this country. For example:
Today, I had a scheduled appointment with my UCSF physician. I selected him back when he was a youngster at his first posting and we have grown up together; he has saved my bacon more than once. A thoroughly dedicated who is up to date on just about everything he should know and do (and where to go when he needed help) “He” is Doctor Kubashi.
I had a nice visit with Dr K, after he had quickly reviewed my history and recent medical procedures (on the monitor) and he had noted and nodded at my blood pressure and weight. Nothing extraordinary had developed over the past couple of months, so this exam was routine.
Two days prior to today’s visit, I had visited the UCSF lab and had blood drawn. An hour after I got home, the results of the visit were available on line, and they could be easily read and explained in plain English. The quickness and precision of today’s medicine is almost more than I can understand, because I was brought up in the time and locations of precious little or no medical care for me and my extended family.
To the point – and the point is that medical advances, and the availability of medical care for me has, without doubt, extended my life and kept me healthier in this extra time – by quite a few years. And, since my great grandson Connor came along not long ago, I appreciate all the extras time to set him straight about life in general and about how to handle himself around our womenfolk. Here is how Dr. K has gone about being the good modern doc:
Last year, after recurrence of some bad pain, Doc K sent me to an specialist who did some tests and then made a couple of small incisions in my stomach, inserted some small things and dragged out my gall bladder.!
Back in March of this year, I dragged myself in and he sent me over to startle the UCSF medical staff into a scramble to hospitalize me and set to work on a particularly bad pneumonia. I’m just about back to feeling as good as I did before this last bout. All of this care would have completely unimaginable only a generation ago, and since I have lived through all the stages from none to exceptional care, I am appreciative.
Now, let me tell explain how, to people of my age and history, the contrast between my current treatment and my health care back there seems as wide as the distance between the first upright ape and modern man.
The relationship is simple – there was no treatment “then.” That is why those same rural residents and their descendants are so appreciative of the healthcare, even minimal in many cases, they receive today. The contrast between the non-care – and the dramatic changes occurring during my lifetime, in one generation, is astounding.
Until my Mother was sixty-five, she had never had a doctor to call and never had medical insurance; she did not even CONSIDER such care, because she could not afford it. Our family simply did not think of such! With the arrival of MEDICARE, she was overwhelmed by the privilege of visiting a doctor, and she was absolutely floored to receive such personal attention and care in the local hospital when such was needed more and more as she aged even more.
When I visited her during the last years of her life, Mother almost always referred glowingly to “My Doctor.”
That care she enjoyed was a far cry from the “medicines” being offered to her and the rest of us by shills on just about every radio station in the country!
As did practically everyone did in those days, folks were influenced by snake-oil sales pitches. One aunt was always sending off for “Cardui for Women,” and she was frequently receiving and unwrapping and dosing herself from little packets labeled: “Snap back with Stanback” (headache powders.) I never saw her using any of the other stuff advertised on “WJJD Chicago” – A big seller was “Doan’s Little Liver Pills” for example. Of course all that “medicine” was guaranteed. Even today, Doans is advertised more simply as “Doans Pills.” I know nothing about the health benefits cited.
How were the young ones treated for the many illnesses of youth? After all, none of us ever had access to preventive shots for those childhood illnesses. (In Army Bootcamp, after I received the full battery of inoculations, I took to bed and was excused by my unexplainably understanding Sergeants.)
When growing up, my sister and I often disguised our symptoms when we were ill, and only when it became obvious to the adults that something was up did we confess. The reason for subterfuge was the treatment we knew would be coming for any and all illness! Depending upon how the adult felt at the time, we would have to drink some evil concoction we did not understand but were convinced was poison! The worst of the bunch was Castor Oil, which we were forced to drink, although no human being has ever been able to keep that stuff down!
Treatment for the frequent human contact with bugs and other creatures was based upon ancient rituals – possibly from medieval times – and was practiced whether or not it worked!
Once when a Bumble Bee stung me, my grandfather removed his wad of chewing tobacco and placed it on the spot and wrapped it with his stained bandana.. I don’t remember whether or not that treatment worked, but that was the “old timey” treatment available.
For Rattlesnake bites, the treatment varied. If the snake bit a dog, you just cut an X over each of the two punctures and let him bleed. When this treatment was applied to a family hound, bitten on the nose, the poor creature survived but no longer had a sense of smell
When a logger was bitten by a huge Cottonmouth, his coworkers killed the snake, cut and skinned an eight inch section from his middle and placed the flesh directly on the bite – secured with strips of cloth. The man survived and thus reinforced the belief in the value os such treatment.
My only visit to a doctor before turning myself over to the Army and Uncle Sam, happened when I was badly burned on the chest and left arm. The only doctor in Clyo, Georgia, treated the wounds by having my Mother mix and apply lime and Linseed oil. I had no additional treatment as such and nothing was given for pain. Later, I came to believe the treatment was simply to apply a covering of the burn to help prevent infection. I survived.
When a neighboring farmer’s son broke an arm, it was agreed that my Mother was best suited to do what had to be done. She massaged the bones back in place, wrapped the lower arm with a soft cloth and secured the splint with three apple-crate slats tied securely. I think he recovered with no lasting effects, despite the lack of X-rays and Plaster of Paris.
Of course there were a lot of people who needed specific care but did not get it.
My friend’s father treated himself after an injury at the local sawmill and survived but was permanently crippled..
