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Brooklyn
Memoir (39)
Our residency program director, Rick called the Chief of Surgery of Beekman and asked him to take care of me. Therefore, my primary care surgeon was a Chief of Surgery. In my case there was no need of surgery, so it was practically little use to have a good surgeon.
However, I accepted Rick’s courtesy, considering it as "a life insurance." The Chief came to see me every morning and say hello and shake my hand. That’s all he did. All the other routine work was done by residents. One hundred dollars (my estimate) with a two-minute routine round was not bad, I thought.
After
one week in the general ward, my roomate went home with Jerry.
I began walking since the chest tube had been withdrawn. I got to know
most of the nurses on the ward and began talking with them.
Some of them invited me to the Nurse's Station at night during their coffee
break. Many of the nurses at Beekman were Thai. In NYC there were a lot
of foreign nurses especially Filipino and Thai. They were hard workers
because they needed to earn money to support their families back home.
They also had a sense of Asian hospitality.
Thai nurses at Beekman were no exception. They were very nice to me, partly
perhaps because I myself was a physician and was Oriental.
This experience brings to mind the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest." It was about a state psychiatric hospital, and Jack Nicholson played a psychiatric patient. An ideal Oriental nurse appeared in the movie. She was a Japanese nurse according to the original novel.
This was my very first experience as a patient, which happened ironically, overseas. As a patient I realized that empathy towards patients was so important. It was a terrible accident, but at the same time it was a valuable experience for me in my climb up the ladder of my career as a physician.
It was my second year in U.S., and 1982 ended with "Chanchiki Okesa"
by Japanese veteran singer Haruo Minami. Japanese TV programs were able
to be seen with a cable TV at my bedside in the hospital.
I was discharged from the Beekman Hospital a week later.
E-mail:kidot@momo.so-net.ne.jp