Tales from the Emergency Room (19 page)

Bee
Sting
Stories

About midway through my career, it became apparent that the immunotherapy for insect stings was not very effective. It did work in some cases however. Fortunately, about that time, really good antigens became available and treatment for possible life-threatening reactions to stings became highly effective.

On the Beach

A young teenage boy had been cavorting on the beach with his friends in front of his summer beach house. The group thought he had decided to take a nap on the sand. When his mother called for him from the house and he did not respond, someone noted that he could not be roused. When he finally regained consciousness in the hospital, he remembered having been stung, and indeed, a sting site was found on his body. One wonders what the outcome would have been had not his condition been noticed and treated correctly and rapidly.

On the Bus

All of my bee-sting patients are instructed to carry adrenalin for self administration in case of a sting in order to gain time enough to get to an appropriate medical setting for treatment. A young man who was in maintenance sting immunotherapy was traveling through Spain with other students during the summertime. A young woman in the back of the bus was stung and immediately began to show signs of a generalized reaction. My patient was there to give her a shot of adrenaline enabling her to get more extensive help and possibly saving her life.

In the Pool

Another patient, the owner of a well-known plastic utensil company was vacationing in Puerto Rico with his wife. She was a nurse. He was in the resort pool when his wife noticed that he had suddenly disappeared under the water. She was able to keep him from drowning when he went rapidly into shock after being stung. Eventually, like most of the others described here, he became a faithful patient with excellent protection.

In the Woods

An older man had been splitting logs in the woods when he was stung. He immediately drove himself home. Luckily, his wife was sitting out on the porch in view of the driveway for, when he exited the car, he collapsed on the gravel. By then 911 was working and he recovered without incident after treatment.

In the Greenhouse

The wife of a board member of one of my hospitals in NYC was showing her minister around her greenhouse in North Carolina one morning. She was stung during the greenhouse tour, collapsed and died immediately so sudden and severe was her reaction. I do not know whether she had had prior reactions to stings.

On the lawn

I began my practice on July 1st. In August, I happened by chance to be working alone in the office on a Saturday afternoon. When the telephone rang, I answered it, forgetting that I was connected to the answering service. A patient of mine reported that he had been stung while mowing his lawn, that he had taken a shower, and was beginning to feel “funny”
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I got his address, which was nearby and drove to his home where I found him alone, lying on the sofa covered with hives. I administered adrenalin immediately, which took effect quickly. He went to the hospital then to finish recovering. We talked occasionally about the coincidences involved in his story.

While Out Running

In my practice there never was a bee sting reaction more severe than the one for which the patient had been treated originally. Except for one man. I was at a summertime party when I got a call that the patient had been admitted to the hospital. He had not finished his initial treatment regimen and had been somewhat irregular about getting his shots. What did him in however, was running on a very hot summer day and getting stung. He knew he was in trouble immediately, and so, being close by, simply continued running to the hospital emergency room. He recovered, somewhat chastened, and then was a bit more careful about his treatments.

In the Garden

I got a call while in the New York City office about an older man who had been stung, suffered a reaction and was hospitalized. His doctor asked if I would stop in to see him to make sure that his treatment was going correctly. Forgetting about the tie I was wearing (my college tie covered with yellow jackets, the school mascot), I soon found myself talking with the patient and examining his medications. During this procedure I was leaning over the patient a bit when he asked, smiling, whether I wore that particular tie whenever I saw a bee-sting patient. We both had a good laugh over that and the patient by now was almost fully recovered.

Employees

The Transformation

One of the blessings of my practice was the high quality of my helpers and their loyalty. One time, however, I needed to hire a new secretary for the White Plains office. A very pretty but not especially neat-looking young lady came for an interview and I hired her. It soon became apparent that the job was not going to work out for her. This was mainly because of sloppy habits involving her person, dress and the office duties. She was bright enough to do the work, but entirely unmotivated. So, I fired her on a Friday afternoon. When I arrived in the office on Monday, there she was. I assumed that she had misunderstood her position and so I fired her again. Again, she showed up for work in the morning. I didn’t know what else to do, so I called her mother. She agreed with everything I had done and said she would enlighten her daughter. That did work. She didn’t show up again for work.

About a year later there came a knock on the back door to the office, which I opened. There stood a lovely young woman, beautifully dressed. I stared at her and when she said that I probably didn’t recognize her, I suddenly did! Here was the young woman I had fired several times. She was in school now, doing very well and from our talk, seemed to have life well in hand. So, I called her mother. She told me that the best thing that had ever happened to her daughter was the “difficult” experience she had had in my office. Because of it, she decided to turn her life around (with a lot of help from Mom, I bet), and was now on her way to success. If I needed a secretary then, I would have rehired her in a flash. She did not however want her old job back!

Pat

For many years in the New York City office, Pat was the office manager. She was a beautiful black woman, the mother of four fine, grown children and a devout Christian. All of the patients loved her. Here are a couple of my fond memories of Pat.

Pat was always on the telephone. She had to be when the HMOs came in. Otherwise few of the patients’ bills would have ever been paid. And, of course, there were HMO approvals and numerous other insurance related problems to be solved. There was a seldom-used loud speaker system in the office. One day while I was in my office in the back, I heard music spilling from the speakers. When I went to investigate, I found Pat filing charts with the telephone receiver off of its cradle. Pat, it turned out, spent so much time on “hold” with the insurance companies, which always played music while Pat waited, that she decided to listen to the music while getting her office work done. She was sure to know when someone came on the line. An efficient use of Pat’s time.

I knew that Pat spent most of her weekends at church services. One Monday morning when I came into the office, Pat greeted me in a hoarse voice that could hardly be heard. A little while later, I noticed that she was moving very slowly around the office and even had a slight limp. I knew immediately what had happened. So I called Pat into my office and explained that I applauded her religiosity but that perhaps it would be best if she sat quietly in church on Sundays. Saturdays were fine, but she ought to leave Sunday to recover for work the next day. She immediately burst out laughing as did I while she explained that indeed she had been a bit carried away the day before at church, just as I suspected.

Pat could perfectly well say “ask” because I asked her to, but she never did, preferring “axed” instead.

Pat’s daughter and daughter-in-law worked in the office for periods of time and her sons were recruited to do any of the hard stuff around the place such as hanging blinds and moving furniture. Her sons preferred to work in the back of the office since Pat could see just what they were doing up front and would always have something to say about how the work was being done! Believe me, no one ever stepped out of line while Pat was around and most of us did her bidding without really realizing it. When the time came, the man who bought my practice hired Pat to work for him and she subsequently went off to nursing training. To this day, I have no idea how old Pat is for she had such a pretty face and beautiful skin which never changed over the years.

Pat usually wore a long dashiki to work, with boots and a cap. And, she never used an umbrella, declaring that if it was God’s will that she get wet with His rain that would be a good thing. I never saw Pat out of sorts and she was unfailingly kind to the patients. She was and is one of my favorite people.

A Male Employee

Once in awhile a man would call to see if I had a position open. On the rare occasions that I did, I had to tell them that I was unable to hire a male because he and I would be alone in the office from time to time with only a female patient present. Since I never saw a female without a chaperone, I thought it best to keep a female employee nearby. The men inquiring always agreed with me. However, that would not have been the case in the NY office since the female secretary would always be there during office hours. So I did hire a well qualified man to help with the nursing chores. Within a short period of time he had run up a large telephone bill calling 900 numbers, usually at night after we had all gone home, all but filled a separate refrigerator with blood samples which needed testing but were never sent to the lab, and wrote checks for himself on our account, which the bank happily cashed for him, to the tune of $6000.00! (The bank refused to give our money back despite proof of what had happened, so we took our accounts, business and personal, elsewhere.) From then on we didn’t even entertain the idea of a male staff member, unfairly, I suppose.

The Cigarette

Needless to say, there was a strict no smoking policy in the office. My nurse/secretary was a chain smoker. She did smoke in the office when hours were not going on, but I never saw her smoke or go out to smoke during office hours. One day I discovered the reason. After she would take all of the trays out of the refrigerator in preparation for office hours, she would place her cigarette in an ash tray in the refrigerator! I have no idea how long she got away with this, but she was asked not do it anymore right then. Several years later, she quit smoking cold turkey. The reason; her 3 year old daughter was suspected of having a serious disease and her mother thought she had better be around to care of her in the future. Thankfully, the diagnosis on the child did not pan out, but my aide never did take up smoking again.

The Pink Curler

Another time, I advertised for a receptionist. One lady arrived for her interview. She was a mature, white haired lady whose sole noticeable feature was an enormous pink curler set in the middle of the top of her head. It was all I could do to keep from staring and even harder to ask why she had shown up for a job interview in this condition. I didn’t hire her.

Lois

I hired a woman to be the office secretary and to help in the lab. I have no idea how things would have turned out because in her first and only month’s work for me she was absent without prior notice five times. One Thursday morning when I arrived in the office she was not there again but her shoes were under the desk! I found my wife at a hospital board meeting and asked her to come to work for afternoon office hours. Then I thought, Lois had said something to me about wanting to work. She, her three boys and her husband had been patients of mine for several years by then. So, I got her chart out and called her at home. When I asked if she would like to come to work for me that afternoon, she replied, “I’m standing here with my coat over my arm!”

Indeed, she did show up for work that afternoon and started being trained by me and Peggy. When I retired 10 years later, the doctor who bought my practice hired her. Recently, Lois also retired after she had worked in the office for 17 years! I literally do not remember that she missed a single day of work that wasn’t a holiday or vacation day. Lois had been a school teacher, a fact that was clear to me when I read the sign she had posted, in perfect printing, at her window. “Hi! I’m Lois, what’s your name?” All those years later, the same sign was still there.

Lois is a lovely woman, very bright and full of ideas and a fashion plate in the bargain. I am happy to say that we are still the best of friends—she and her husband come to see us when they are in Baltimore and we go to them for Seder. Truly one of the nicest relationships to come out of my practice.

Betty

Betty is a beautiful woman who worked in the office for many years. She was not able to do lab work, because, as she said, she never learned how. Everyone loved her. Her son eventually went to medical school and used the microscope I used in medical school. When I first arrived on the scene, the office was in my eventual partner’s house. My first day on the job, just out of training, I was alone, the doctor having gone on vacation. Betty, always there, was also missing, so the secretary from New York was manning the desk. A mother and her son, the patient, arrived and settled down in the living room. They didn’t see anyone they recognized, and soon, I stuck my head out of the office (sun room) to call a patient in. At that point, the patient was heard to say to his mother, “Are we in the right office?” They were but there was no one around whom they had ever seen before. Another time, Dr. Brown was away again, having left me in charge. I saw his new and old patients for several weeks. One patient asked me, in all seriousness, “Is there a Doctor Brown?” I thought this very funny, but assured her that he would shortly be back and she would have a laying-on of the eyes pretty soon.