Tales from the Emergency Room by FAAAAI MD William E. Hermance Read Free Book Online Page A

laugh at all this because no tragedy came to either the new or the older mother.
    Grass
    Just after we moved into our garret apartment we had two snowstorms about a week apart each about three feet deep. It was an exceptionally snowy winter even for Rochester. On a day in April while my wife was looking out the window, she said, “Do you have sidewalks here?” I replied that of course we had sidewalks. Then she said, “I know you don’t have grass!” Luckily the next two winters were not as bad, but unfortunately, given our rental agreement, the grass did reappear each year.
    Wann Lassen Sie den andere Schuh Fallen?
    There is an old German story about a man who always dropped his first shoe noisily and his other shoe quietly. To listeners this may have given rise to the phrase “waiting for the other shoe to fall”. As newlyweds, our bedroom had one small area of wall behind which was our neighbors’ bedroom closet. Herb and Charlotte, an older couple who eventually became good friends of ours, lived next door. Shortly after our arrival while we were in bed we heard Herb drop his shoe in his closet. However, we never did hear the other one hit the floor. Since it was clear that Herb could plainly hear everything that went on in our bedroom from inside his closet, we decided that he did not want us to know that he was in there. This sent us into gales of laughter and we actually did hear a chuckle from the other side of the partition. When I think of it, I wonder that Peggy and I never gave Herb’s eaves-dropping another thought. Now, however as we look back, we are still waiting to hear the other shoe drop and still laughing about our apartment on Ardmore Street.
    We were friendly with our downstairs neighbors, too. Peggy saw them preparing to leave in a taxi and found out then that they were on their way to a famous hospital in Boston. The wife had a serious medical problem and they were going to have it treated. Less than 48 hours they returned. It seems that when the house officer at the Boston hospital came to admit our neighbor, he was astonished to find that they had come from Rochester. He could not understand why they were in Boston instead of at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester. He indicated that there wasn’t anything that could be done there that couldn’t be done in Rochester, and so back they came. I remember that our neighbor recovered after being admitted to Strong. I often wonder why patients go from one place with an excellent medical center to another one far away, unless there is clearly no place nearby which could handle the medical problem.
    The Halloween Party
    George came for supper on Halloween, 1959. Earlier that day Peggy and I drove over a wide, bumpy set of railroad tracks in town. My wife was very pregnant and anxious to get things moving. She managed to produce supper which included peaches in syrup for dessert. Just as I was about to have some, she announced that she thought she might be going into labor. Had the railroad track trip worked? I spilled peaches down the front of my shirt.
    George said that he would drive behind us to the hospital since he was never very confident that my car would get us where we wanted to go. So, off we went, Peggy complaining that she guessed that she would miss our class Halloween costume party. She was admitted promptly, her doctor, the chief resident in OB-GYN was there and, once she was settled in, I left for the party in a room five stories below. Then I began going up and down (thank God for Mr. Otis) keeping a check on things. Between the peaches and eventually having been thrown up on it probably seemed as if I was in a costume, too. (On one of my visits to Peggy, she beckoned to me from the labor room doorway to come over to her in bed. I did, whereupon she threw up on me.)
    Her labor continued and the party broke up. It looked as if we were not going to have a Halloween baby. When Peggy was taken into the delivery room, I stayed out at