If you have followed any of my previous blogs ( thank you) you probably surmised I came from a small Southern town in Eastern N.C. We were blessed to have two doctors, that I will refer to as Dr. B and Dr. H. Their bedside manner was totally one-hundred and eighty degrees apart. ( personal sidebar–both made house calls in the day, and yours truly was delivered in a small wood frame house on a cold November day. Take that Grey’s Anatomy). If one looked up country doctor in Webster’s ( for the young I.T.’s out there, that is a dictionary) Dr. B’s picture would be beside it. If you looked up methodically, Dr. H’s picture would be beside it.
Several blogs ago, I gave a brief description of my two older sisters. Both quite different, but did have one thing in common. They loved pushing me into the double-dare world of my on stupidity, ” you can’t do that”. To this day I still have the scars to prove that stupidity. Examples of their double-dares: No, I could not jump from tree to tree as Tarzan did, ( stitches), no I could not jump off the roof of our house with a towel as a cape and fly like Superman (stitches), no, I could not jump on the bed and do a backflip ( stitches), and no, a wash tub is not a good idea as a boat in a flooded swamp ( stitches).
As my sisters would drag me screaming and yelling to Dr. B’s, the welcome became monotonous, ” what did he do this time”?. Dr. B’s practice was made up largely of textile mill employees. For the mere sum of three dollars a week deducted from your pay, your office visits were covered. Before you start comparing medical cost for today think. Dr. B was pulling three dollars a week from four hundred employees weather it was needed or not. If there was an additional charge it was usually for penicillin shots, that was the cure all for everything in the day. Unless you had one foot in the grave, a visit to Dr. B was about fifteen minutes. His class line, ” does it hurt when you do that”? Yes. “Well don’t do that”.
Dr. B’s office was located in the in the back half of the local drug store ( which he owned), privacy was not an option. Everyone in town knew exactly the ailments of the neighborhood. On this occasion as I was getting stitched up from one of my double-dares, when my mom happened to drop into the drug store. ” Who in the world is doing all that screaming back there” she asked. Mr. Todd the manager replied ” I think your daughters just brought your son in for stitches”. For the record, Dr. B preferred rubbing alcohol as a pain killer rather than wasting time with a shot of Novocain.
A few years later I gave up on Tarzan, Superman, and acrobatics. Still out to lunch on the wash tub as a floatation.
Modern medicine from yesteryear. If you are employed by Medicare, please disregard the above.
Be safe.
Joe's Bakers Dozen 