Memoirs of a Teenage Surgeon: The First Cut

"Take the scalpel and cut on the line", I did as I was told feeling the cut on my own leg as I was cutting into the patient starting to amputate his leg, and me being only 16 years old.
    It was an overcast gloomy June day.  I had rode in with my dad to his Liquor store, Tuxedo Wine and Liquor, around the corner from Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx NY.  We drove each morning from our house in Queens which was  a few block from where Donald Trump grew up( no I never knew him or his family). This was my summer routine at the age of 16 for the third year in a row. You see two years ago my father, through one of his customers who was the head technician in the surgical research laboratory at Montefiore Hospital,

Montefiore Hospital, one of the nations
leading research hospitals.  In 1968 the
Red brick with green roof was the
 original Hospital

got me a volunteer position at the surgical research labs(how that came about is another tale to tell). The night before I had worked till after midnight organizing and plotting on grafts the data on a research project I was doing with Dr. Smith(name changed to protect a surgeon still practicing).  When I got in I called Dr. Smith at the local city hospital where he was working that day.  He asked me to come over and we would review the data.
     So I get on the 4 elevated subway(misnomer in this case) and take it south to 167th street and Jerome avenue(one block from where both my parents grew up). I walked the half block to Morrisania city hospital walking into the emergency room entrance. Quickly going to the bank of elevators, I rode up to the top floor saying hello to the others going to that floor that I knew from previous times.

Morrisania City Hospital,
The top floor was the operating rooms.
With no air conditioning the windows
were open during the summer, so we had
 a sterile fly swatter on the sterile
 operation field.

When I got off the elevator I asked someone if they had seen Dr. Smith and told he was in pathology.  On entering pathology I saw him talking to on of the pathologists in the cutting room(the room where fresh specimens are cut up and prepared for slides to examine).  I walked over to them and they were standing, each drinking a cup of coffee with cream.  As I walked up I noticed that a clump of fat was floating in the pathologists cup. So I mentioned it to him.  He looked at it, not saying anything, he walked a few feet to the coffee table.  He took a spoon and fished out the clump of fat and continued drinking the coffee.  That was the days when men were men and doctors felt they were indestructible. Dr Smith said come with me.
    We walked over to the operating rooms and as we walk in the head nurse told Dr. Smith that there was an emergency in the E.R and there were no residents to assist him.  He turned to me and asked if I would help him.  The nurse didn't even react since I had been assisting him , on occasional cases,for almost a year.  I had started working with him 2 years ago in the surgical research labs and he knew I could do a good job assisting him.
    I followed him into the doctors changing room and opened one of the lockers without a lock.  I began undressing to my underpants and went over and got a set of scrubs.  I then put my shoes back and shoe covers over them.  we walked out to the pre-op area and Dr. Smith talked to the patient while I stood quietly behind him.  He introduced me as a student who would be assisting him. I reached around and shook hands with the patient, an obese black man in his fifties.
   We went back to the lounge and for the 20 minutes till the patient was asleep and ready for us we went over the data I had put together from the research study I was doing for Dr. Smith in the animal research laboratory at Montefiore Hospital.  A nurse came in said they were ready for us.  We walked to the scrub sinks and put on the cap and masks( unlike TV where they have the TV nurse put on the mask after the surgeons scrub, solely so you see the actors face for a few more moments). We scrubbed for the required 5 minutes.  We walked into one of the most unique operating rooms


TO BE CONTINUED


 Above knee amputation movie(run at 2X speed).

College: No This Is Buffalo Not Oxford.

It was June 1971 and I was on the plane on my way to Buffalo for an orientation for my freshman year. Now you may wonder why I was on the way to Buffalo when I had got a full ride academic scholarship to NYU (that will be a later blog). When I got there with several hundred other incoming freshman that would all become my closest friends(LOL), well at least a few, we got to sample what life at UB would be like. I met a girl that was the same height as me, six foot tall. She was the off spring of a Swedish man and Japanese woman that met during the occupation of Japan after WWII. She was absolutely Gorgeous and she was the first girl I knew that was my height. We spent most of that weekend together. It definitely gave me something to look forward to when I would be coming back in the fall.

They told us about a new experiment in American College Education that they were going to do. They wanted to start a residential college system similar to that at Oxford and Cambridge. There were going to be four colleges: Clifford Furness College (the science); College B (the humanities); Rachael Carson College (the environment); and an Art College. Clifford Furnas and College B were to be in McDonald Hall and the other two in the residential hall across the quad. The concept was that rather then upper class resident advisers, all the resident advisers will be graduate students. The Dorm director rather then being just some elderly couple would be a Junior Faculty member and their family. There would also be fellows of the College and they would hold seminars and offer non-credit courses exclusively for the members of the college. The idea was to have students who would expand their studies outside of the traditional disciplines and combine the arts and science when approaching a topic. I intellectually fell in love with the idea and ran to sign up. I met Lyle Borst PhD the Dean of Clifford Furnas College and Jon Ketchum (pictured at right) the Dean of College B. I will have lots more Blogs about both these men as they are two of the most important men in my intellectual development and also both had fascinating history and uniquely inquisitive minds.

We also met Warren and Tony Barbour(see picture of Warren on right) the dorm 'parents' . They lived with their new born daughter in an apartment on the first floor. Warren was an anthropology Professor and specialized in mid American ancient cultures and headed the excavation of The Teotihuacan Valley Project.

As a founding member, I stayed with Cliford Furnass College for six years through the end of my Junior year in Medical school(being the longest resident member ever). It was where I met Margie my wife. I had so many fantastic encounters with professors that I would never have had if I wasn't a resident there. Through Jon Ketchum I developed my strong interest in philosophy and stayed, during the summers, at the student residence Oakstone Farm that he ran. So stay tuned and I'll blog a lot on these topics and men.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.

Racing the Day Away.

When I was 14 I started working at Bridgehampton Race Track. I should not have been able to work till I was 18 but that never stopped me. I was also doing surgery on dogs at fourteen and people at 16(much more on this in later posts) so why would I let a little age deficiency stop me. My brother-in-law Bruce Newman had the year earlier got involved in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA). The SCCA ran auto races and road rallies across the country. They got members to volunteer to do all the jobs around the track during the races. The four main jobs were Pit marshal, Flagging and communication, rescue and Timing and Scoring. Bridgehampton was arguably the most dangerous racetrack in the United States. They ran local, regional, national races and the Trans-Am and Can-Am races. Twenty people both race drivers and spectators alike were killed over the 45 years the track was open.

Take a look at the race course on this video of the Can-Am of 1968(jump to 1 minute and 10 seconds) (those cars are going 180-210 MPH):




The race track was built by local racing enthusiasts when in the early fifties people were getting killed and very serious accidents were happening on the back roads of Bridgehampton. It became one of the fastest and most dangerous tracks in the USA.

Also among the drivers with a deep sense of respect for the place is Mario Andretti, who first drove at Bridgehampton early in a career that includes a world championship and an Indianapolis crown.

''It's a special track,'' Mr. Andretti said in an interview. ''It was one of the first race tracks I raced on in my career, in 1965. It was actually an awesome course. It was dangerous, in a sense.''

The first of the course's 13 turns, a right-hander that dives downhill, was infamous among racers. ''Turn One was an unbelievable corner because it was blind, and you just fell out,'' Mr. Andretti said. ''It could scare the bejesus out of anybody.''

If you look at the video and see there were no guard rails. Those men in white jump suits were me when I was on flagging and communication (when I both almost died and saved someone else's life) and also when I was on rescue( again almost getting killed and saving someones life)(these to be later posts). Over the pit area you will see a tower, that is were I spent most of my time the last two summers working there. I met some of the greats of racing and had a ball getting an award for my work. My brother-in-law Bruce worked Pit Marshal all four years and I was for most of my first year.

This Blog Snippets of my life, is going to be a daily blog for at least one year. I will tell stories about me that I hope you find interesting. If you like them please do two things: click to become a follower; and post on your Facebook page or twitter them. I hope to have 10,000 followers by years end. Some stories will be very personal. I will try to remember the correct names of those involved, however, I have a terrible memory for names and some names will be completely fictitious. The stories however are completely truthful as far as I can remember. Hope you enjoy.