Free Tales from the Emergency Room by FAAAAI MD William E. Hermance Page B

pick up our pagers. They were quite large and could only be transported around if attached to a belt or strap. The hospital extended for one square block and the system would cover that, and with luck, the residence across 58th Street. Now of course one can be paged almost anywhere, but at that time New Jersey was out of the question. We were instructed to have the pager with us at all times. After I spent the first day with my new machine, it came time for me to take a shower before trying to get some sleep. So there I was just ready to get into the shower with my pager in my hand. Then I had to try to find some way to stay in touch so I put it on a ledge in the shower stall. By the time I got back to my room I had fallen out of love with this new devise and never again took a shower with it. Many were the patients however who did not have to listen to the loud speaker paging system any more, and how happy they were!
    The Blackout
    On November 9, 1965, just as I had one leg in my street pants preparing to go home to White Plains, the lights went out. I used my pocket flashlight to finish dressing and headed for the elevator. The dormitory (which no longer exists) was so old that the elevator was operated by hand by a rope mechanism. No kidding! My car was parked at the corner of 58 th Street and Tenth Avenue, and so I was able to reach the corner easily. Someone was already in the intersection directing traffic, since the stoplights were not working. I then made it onto the West Side Highway and was driving along when I suddenly realized that I could not see the lights of New Jersey. I found out the scope of the electrical failure quickly enough on the car radio.
    When I arrived home, my wife had three children in the kitchen with her with strict instructions not to wander off. A couple of candles and flashlights were providing some illumination. She was thoroughly annoyed that the lights had gone out and was floored to learn that the entire east coast was in the dark. Still, she managed to produce some sort of meal and we put the kids to bed. We sat in candlelight for awhile and then went to bed ourselves since there was little point in staying up in the dark. By morning I think the problem was resolving since I do not remember missing any time at work.
    The wife of one of my professors, however, was certain that she had caused the whole thing since the lights went off just as she turned on the oven. There were many similar stories.
    The Bath Blanket
    Late one evening when I was an intern, my resident paged me so that I could go with him to see an elderly female patient in a single room on the medical ward. The reason probably was so that I would be able to care for her during the night if the need arose and the resident could get some uninterrupted sleep. In any case, when we arrived in the patient’s room, she was sitting up in bed enclosed in an oxygen tent. Her fever was high but not yet in the dangerous range and the nurses wanted to know how this should be dealt with. In those days, bringing the patient’s fever down was of paramount concern and the best way to do that was to soak a cotton bath blanket in rubbing alcohol and cover the patient with that. The evaporating alcohol would draw the heat from the patient’s body. We agreed that that would be the thing to do and the nurses set to work. When I returned early in the morning to check on things, the little lady was still propped up in her bed, saying her rosary and chortling to herself. She was in great high spirits because she was thoroughly drunk. The alcohol wrap had been left partially under the tent so that she had been breathing in a good deal of alcohol. I would not have been surprised if she had never imbibed alcohol before and had certainly never been drunk. The happy ending—her fever was gone never to return and she was discharged several days later!
    The Nametag
    In training, we all wore our nametags just above the breast pocket of our white coats.