Nothing will get you fired quicker than telling a truth that influential people don’t want to hear.
You will remember that my favorite great doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis, was declared insane and ousted for suggesting that doctors wash their hands between autopsies and delivering babies.
Great doctors should be admired. Through the ages, Hippocrates, Galen, Harvey and innumerable others have commanded respect and attention.
How sad it is, then, when in our own Maine hospitals we notice that treasured photographs of long-gone physicians, their faces wreathed in smoke curling up from a meerschaum bowl, have all been removed from the walls and replaced by signed Jamie Wyeth prints.
Therefore, let us now honor our medical friends, who keep us ambulatory long after our allotted three score and ten, by recording some of their stories before they are lost or distorted.
Was it Nick Apollonio who told me of Old Doc Tibbets, who used to take the boat out to Monhegan once a month just to pull teeth? A venerable member of the medical community, Doc Tibbets had never learned how to administer Novocain – so he’d get the patient in the chair and call for a bottle of whiskey.
Then he’d drink the whiskey and pull the tooth.
Great-Uncle Ed was riding home with his doctor friend when he said, “I’m hungry.” The doctor handed him a bottle and said, “Take some of these pills.” Uncle Ed said he never ate pills, and the doctor said, “No harm in them. They’re mostly sugar.”
An old man in Rockland told my brother about doctoring in the good old days: “Doctors made house calls back then. I was up in the bedroom on the second floor and the doctor was so drunk they had to carry him up the stairs. Best doctor I ever had.”
House calls are a thing of the past, but some things never change. Now as then, most patients do not follow their doctor’s advice. A study found that 88 percent of women in the U.S. wear shoes that are too small and 55 percent have bunions, which are nine times more common in women than men. Are people stupid when they permit pain to be administered by the dictates of fashion?
Can we blame doctors for not giving us the kind of advice we want? Who should be surprised when we are told to give up sweets, quit smoking, stop drinking alcohol, eat a pound of salad and walk a mile every day?
Our physician friends should know that there are very pleasant ways to retard the aging process: While doing a show at the Boothbay Harbor Opera House with Matthew Fogg and Brad Terry, I was asked to dance – several times – by a girl young enough to be my granddaughter.
Although I was over 70 at the time, my feet flew like fairy butterfly wings over the polished floor. I can tell you that if every man over 70 would dance for one hour – seven nights a week – with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter, his cardiovascular system would be the envy of the high priest at Shangri La, and within 30 years the overload of virile 100-year-old men would clean out Social Security.
Because you’ve read this far, you might as well hear of my operation. After five years of coughing, I was told that all would be well if I would sign here and there and subject myself to a quick snip.
After five years of listening to me cough, my loving wife, Marsha, might have preferred to see me fall down a flight of stairs. Falling telescopes an eon of degeneration into a few seconds. A quick humble tumble would have eliminated my pathetic whining about vague sources of discomfort over a period of several years.
How many long-suffering caregivers think to themselves, “If Grampy says ‘my left hip’ one more time, he’s off to rehab in Fort Kent”?
You should look forward to your next invasive surgery as patients are now well prepared to go under the knife. A nurse comforted me with her words for at least half an hour, outlining each step in the procedure. This alone says a lot for the medical profession, as every policeman I’ve ever seen on TV has to read from a small card, “You have the right to remain silent.”
My most memorable moment? A needle was inserted in my arm and I felt numbness creeping up, up past my elbow. At this point, perhaps in a last-ditch attempt to ward off potential lawsuits, the anesthesiologist whispered, “Mr. Skoglund. Do you know why you are here?”
“Yes. The doctor is buying a bigger boat.”
You have heard that laughing after operations activates some innate healing chemical and that patients who laugh leave the hospital three days earlier than they otherwise would.
Some progressive hospitals now have humor rooms where recuperating patients can watch funny movies, so it came as no surprise to me when my family physician enthusiastically told me about unbelievable doings at our own local medical center.
He said, “We can’t believe it. People are leaping out of bed and going home from the hospital three days earlier than we ever thought possible.”
I said, “You’ve got one of those new humor rooms.”
“No, we doubled the room rates.”
The humble Farmer can be seen on Community Television in and near Portland and visited at his website:
www.thehumblefarmer.com/MainePrivateRadio.html
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