Pediatric Anecdotes: an Introduction

Introduction

    As a pediatrician for thirty-five years, I have always had the urge to write.  Urge may not be the right word.  Fellow writers know that there is no urge.  There is a yearning, an emotional and intellectual Siren’s call, an eager anticipation to express my thoughts and feelings.  It is not writing; it is a meditation as I convey the meaning of the path of my days.  This is a source of consolation as the long day winds to an end, as I hang up my Quixotic mantel, the peaceful blanket of nightfall surrounding me. 

     As a solo doctor, after early morning hospital rounds in the NBICU, seeing my patients on the pediatric floor and nursery and a busy day in my home-office, I would often see patients until 9 or 10 p.m.  As the last patient left, a murmured goodbye as the door gently clicks shut, I would feel the irresistible call from the warm solitary light sitting on my desk, waiting in silence, the nascent garden sleeping outside the French windows, all enveloped in silence.  It was then that I would sit and softly breath, pulling scribbled notes on fragments of prescription paper from my pockets: reminders of a Mother’s gentle look, a child’s question.  My daily moments had been suffused with hidden poetry, enveloping me, and I had to search for their lost memory, to unwrap them, turn them around like precious gifts and wait.  I would often reminisce about other of my favorite doctors who were writers and felt suffused with gratitude and humility as I tried to join this on this journey.  From Chekovian house calls in Russia to Connecticut homes snuggling the Saugatuck River over a hundred years later...we were fellow travelers on this arduous and rewarding road.  We confronted the same pathos, had the same struggles, the same failures, the same happiness.  I have re-read my James Herriot books dozens of times, starting in medical school, in hopes of living this life... and it had happened.    

     I have collected over 2,200 anecdotes…starting in medical school and residency, through the inner city of Paterson, N.J. for two years in the Public Health Service, to eleven years in Westport, Connecticut as an anachronistic solo pediatrician with an office in my home, surrounded by dear family and friends, and finally to the last 15 years of working in migrant clinics, rural and city clinics for the poor and underserved in the South.  I hope you enjoy these.