I ALMOST DIED!

I must have been about ten. My mother used to complain that whatever childhood disease was going around, I would get it. When I got sick it was hard for her, worrying about me, taking care of me, while having to run a grocery store. Fortunately, the store was right across the street; I could see it out the window and could tell if the store were busy or not. My mom would come up from the store from time to time when it wasn't too busy to take my temperature, feel my head or give me some juice or tea with honey. It wasn't so bad, my being sick, but it was hard on my mom.

She complained because I got the measles and chicken pox, whooping cough and sore throats. Lots of sore throats, some of them so bad that all I could get past the soreness was jello or ice cream. That wasn't so bad either. But one time I had a super sore throat and the doctor said it was scarlet fever. Nothing to be done but wait for the fever to break. But I had 105-106 and it didn't break. Day after day I was feverish till I was almost comatose. I remember waking up from time to time for my juice and tea. But mostly I was out of it. Weeks went by and the doctor said that the fever was nature's way of fighting the infection. Eventually my body's defenses would kill the germ, a bad streptococcus, or the germ would kill me.

My mother trusted the doctor implicitly. She was his first patient and he was a real gentleman, a real professional, with a bedside manner, exuding confidence. But he was also matter-of-fact about my chances to live. Time would tell.

One day when my mom came up to see how I was and give me some fluids, I saw a look of overwhelming anguish on her face and I got scared. Her hand was on my arm and I grabbed it and said, "ma, don't let me die." I don't know what got into me to say that, except that I could see the expression on her face and the tears in her eyes.

I became aware from that time on that what I said propelled her into action. I heard her on the telephone yelling at Doctor Goldstein. I heard her say that if I die, it will be on his head, it would be his fault. She demanded he get a "baby-specialist." I heard her say, "I don't care if it's Sunday--- kidnap him if you have to!" She realized that she was trusting him as if there were no recourse, but she also must have remembered that there were "baby-specialists," pediatricians. Maybe they would know something more than waiting for the fever to break and doing nothing.

It was like a miracle, almost surreal. Later that evening Dr. Goldstein came with the kidnapped pediatrician. The other doctor was shorter and had a smaller black bag. He listened to the history, looked me over and felt my head. Then he told my mom to get an aspirin tablet and break it in half. She ran to get it and he told me to swallow it. I said I couldn't. She told him I had never swallowed a pill, and besides, my throat hurt terribly. He then instructed her to melt it into a teaspoon of water and add some honey. That I could swallow.

Then he disappeared and I felt asleep. Hours later I woke in a cold sweat, completely drenched, warm and cold at the same time. My mother was overjoyed. The fever had broken. Previous tepid sponge baths had not helped; neither did rub-downs with alcohol. But all I seemed to need was a half tablet of aspirin prescribed by the baby specialist one late Sunday evening. In the wee hours of Monday morning I had a new lease on life. I felt alert and alive for the first time in weeks.

Soon thereafter, an amazing thing happened. My skin peeled off, every bit of it, as if I had had a total body sunburn, but it came off in large sheets, like a snake. It didn't hurt, it just came off. I metamorphosed into a healthy person. Dr. Goldstein was sure he heard a murmur and said my prolonged fever would have certainly damaged my heart. From then on I would be excused from gym and I was supposed to avoid strenuous exercise. In a way I was glad because I was not good at tag or races or stickball or ringelevio. I sat around the store and snacked and got fat. When nobody was looking, I tried exerting myself.

Looking back, this experience must have been a factor in my deciding to become a doctor. You had to know stuff, otherwise you could die. I learned about strep infections and how they really did kill kids in those days, even now. Beta-hemolytic strep can be very virulent. One of my junior high school classmates died. It was called Bright's Disease, kidney failure due to beta hemolytic strep. Now the streptococcus succumbs, for the most part, to antibiotics, but it is developing resistant strains. I learned in bacty that some bugs are inhibited in their growth by higher temperatures, but others not. I also learned that fevers can get out of hand and over time can do damage to the person, so aspirin sometimes becomes a miracle drug.

I became so enamored with aspirin later in life that I took it for every conceivable condition, for my allergies, for my sinuses, for a headache, a backache. In my 60's I took it for my osteo-arthritis; it helped with the pain. You could buy a bottle of 500 for less than ten dollars, a bargain miracle drug. My pharmacology department was enamored with it, as it received a lot of research money from Bayer, but I was sure my professors could not be bought. I took upwards of 8 a day for my knee pain and one day I got pale and weak because I had a GI bleed, due to aspirin.

The followup esophagoscopy showed a suspicion of Barrett's esophagus, a pre-cancerous condition and esophageal cancer was a nightmare and extremely fatal. Further studies led to a recommendation I have my esophagus removed. It was called, "standard-of-care." When I learned there was a high mortality rate from the procedure I decided to get a second and third opinion, and I found out, to my relief, the laboratory path diagnosis was wrong, and I didn't have to have my esophagus removed.

I could have died from the bleed or esophagectomy, so live and learn--- no more aspirin. Anything but... and so I turned to Tylenol, Ibuprophen, Celebrex, Vioxx.

It was good to be a doctor... I could figure out things, get a second opinion like my mother did back when, and learn to watch my numbers--- my weight, my blood pressure, my cholesterol (HDL and LDL), my triglycerides, my sugar, my PSA.

So I'm still alive and kicking, thinking every day how to stay alive. If I wasn't alive, I wouldn't be writing this, would I? Gotta stay alive--- that's the thing!