PaPa and Grandma

Dear Dr. Meriwether,
I have very much enjoyed your stories and have shared them with the extended Selby clan.  They remind me of some stories I've heard from Dr. Gardner, including hillbilly medicine in this part of the world. He tells a hilarious anecdote of curing a woman of food poisoning in a remote cabin up in the Clinch Mountain range.  He instructed her sons to dispose of the "head cheese"  (also called "souse" or "souse loaf" that she had stored on a plank of wood in the shade).  The next morning when he arrived at his office in Tazewell, there were the two boys doubled over and vomiting energetically.

Your stories also bring to mind stories my mother would tell us of working at the "accident room" at Union Memorial Hospital in downtown Baltimore.  The stereotypically stupid-but-kindly Irish policemen usually played a role in her accounts.  For example, after being reprimanded over and over again for not collecting body parts after a trauma for possible reattachment, a cop brought my mother a Roi Tan cigar box full of brains from a jumper suicide.  Another time the ER doc was looking in a transient's ear with one of those old, heavy otiscopes.  "Dent!" he called.  "Get over here!  There's something looking back at me!"  Turned out that the homeless man's ear was full of maggots.  In a very weird small world incident, I happen to know that the doctor's name was Burgwyn.  He was an OB doc on temporary assignment from Richmond.  Years later his son and I were on the faculty at a boarding school together!

Dad also has many stories that we appreciate.  One that sticks out in my mind is when he convinced that giant psychiatric VA hospital in Kentucky to let him start a nuclear medicine department.  You may already know that, despite his choosing a psychiatrist as my godfather, Dad doesn't like psychiatric disorders.  Part of the raw deal he got was being made medical director! (I think the hospital had 1000 psychiatric beds).  Anyway, his very first patient revealed that he had killed his father, cut off the father's head, put it on a fencepost, and conversed with it for several years before being discovered.  I remember Dad saying that "he seemed so normal."

yours,
Henry

Appendicitis and Korea

To  Henry, (formerly known as Hank)   ---   Those waves are really scary. Even worse than Cherokee Lake,I believe. When I was going across the Pacific in a little troop ship for the Korean war we had a storm, but nothing like those waves.  Our ship would rise up in a wave, then go crashing down, sideslipping a bit.  Practically all the troops became seasick.  The lower decks had to be hosed down each day to get rid of what came up. It was in mid-winter, and the troops were made to go up to the main deck in the cold spray while the lower decks were cleaned.   They soon learned that in order to get out of the cold they could come to sick call, and I was helping the two young ship’s doctors handle the load, though I was a passenger myself.   One soldier complained of lower right quadrant pain, and it was decided to operate on him for appendicitis.  I volunteered to give the anaesthesia – open drop ether was what we had.  So the two Navy docs strapped the patient down on a Guerney and proceeded to take out what was a normal appendix after some difficulty as neither had ever done an appendectomy before.   The patient survived, but when the next soldier came in with right lower quadrant pain they decided they had learned their lesson and did not operate.  His appendix ruptured and he was put ashore in Honolulu with peritonitis.     

                          Before going over to Korea to a MASH Unit, I was in Tokyo for a while, and who should pop up from Korea on R & R but your Pop.  I had not seen him since Medical School.

             My father was  named Henry, and my brother, and one of my grandsons, and my wife’s father, and my great grandfather, so that is a very familiar name in the family.         Will Meriwether

The "good" Old Days

Henry   ---  Yes,  Dr. William Henry Gardner  (another Henry) was a good friend, classmate, and we interned together in Memphis.   We interns in Memphis at the University Hospital got a dollar a day, which was a dollar more than your dad got in his internship,  worked a 100 hour workweek, got occasional Sundays off but no holidays and didn’t know we were being exploited as that was the custom.  It is quite different these days I understand.  At the hospital in Memphis the interns’ quarters were in the hospital.  There was no individual paging system and the hospital loudspeakers went on until midnight to call you to take care of the emergencies.  One out of every three patients on the medical wards died, so there were always emergencies.  After midnight the one legged elevator operator would come to get you for emergencies.  He had a peg leg and you could hear him coming down the hall, clump, clump, clump, hoping he would pass by your door.  There were four of us to a room, so there was usually one on call all the time.   Sleep was always a precious item as we got so little of it.  The University Hospital was the only hospital in a hundred mile radius that would admit Afro-Americans, so one had to be very sick to get admitted.  That is why the death rate was so high.  Each ward had 36 beds and a student nurse would be in charge of two wards after midnight.  There were two night supervisor RN’s who patrolled the hospital corridors at night to see that there was no hanky-panky with the student nurses and to help with emergencies.  Those two old crones were really hardnosed  and the student nurses lived in fear of them.  The emergency/admitting area was staffed by three interns over a twenty-four hour period, so that was a highly desirable assignment as you had only an eight hour shift, averaging about two hundred patients per shift to triage, either to admit or send to the out-patient clinics for an appointment.   A medical student was asssigned to the ER to sew up the myriad lacerations that occurred from knife or razor fights .   It was an arduous but exciting time in one’s life.              Will Meriwether

PaPa and the Duel

Henry   ---   Thanks for the news.  It ruined my day.  Anyway, I am reminded of the time when I did the eye pathology for the medical school here at the  the University of Texas.  There were all sorts of eye injuries that resulted in losing an eye, usually involving children.  The most common were B.B. gun injuries and bow and arrow mishaps. 

                        If I remember correctly you are headmaster of a school in East Tennessee. (Morristown  ?)  Your dad lived in East Tennessee for a while, Johnson City, I believe. 

              Now I shall regale you with an anecdote about your dad when we were medical students together in Memphis.     He always was a good tennis player and there were public courts near the University.  One day he had a pick-up game with a fellow who considered himself a superior player.  John creamed him with topspin returns that hit the baseline and jumped up out of his comfort zone and he kept mishitting the ball.  It made him furious and he challenged John to a fistfight.  John wisely replied that he would be happy to fight him but it would have to be the next day as he had to return to class right away.  They agreed on the place and time and I came as John’s second.  When we met up the fellow had calmed down and was quite contrite about losing his temper and apologized.  I think John knew all along what would happen, and I knew that John did not have to rush back to class that previous day.  You have a wise father.          Will Meriwether

imagination

When we think about the five senses, we often wonder about the power of our brains to use the senses in order to interpret the world around us. Touch, sight, sound, smell and taste are the underpinnings of our environmental understanding. At a deeper level, we are amazed that the recurrence of a sensory experience can stimulate a strong memory. A particular fabric might bring to mind a comforting blanket from childhood; a song on the radio might evoke an emotional recollection; a sip of espresso might instantly bring one to an early Sunday morning on St. Mark’s Square in Venice. (Hmm. What brought that to mind?)

The ability to conceive of an idea without the corollary sensate experience is called imagination. When we consider the human power of imagination, it is even more wondrous than the senses! One has but to consider an architectural marvel, the formation of a government, a symphony, or a civic club’s agenda to realize that the imagination is our most powerful tool. Walt Disney is credited with saying, “If you can dream it, you can do it.” Perhaps you agree with this idea.

Despite the magnificent advances in brain study during the past decade, our understanding of the imagination is still rudimentary. Nevertheless, it is something we value. I would assume that we are born with an imaginative capacity. You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when a cursory search of some dubious sources on the world wide web revealed that only 60% of people are imaginative. Let me quickly say that I find such a number to be highly suspect, but let me also say that I’m SURE the number of imaginative people is less than 100%, at least by the time we reach maturity. And if I’m right, we must ask “what happened?”

There is no doubt that spending in excess of 15,000 hours in the schooling process (prior to college) would have some sort of effect on a child’s imagination. A good question would be whether or not sufficient time is devoted to stimulating the imagination. A darker question might suggest that schools are responsible for stifling the imagination.

Imagination fuels innovation. Innovation, by its very definition, speaks to betterment of our lives. I am no brain scientist, but I am confident that the mind’s eye is real. Real teachers, those who “draw out” the inborn genius in their students, celebrate the imagination. Tomorrow’s world will be better if it is shaped by those who can imagine a better tomorrow.

My Visual Autobiography

Daffodils and the Classroom

Daffodils are frequently confused by weather patterns. Right in the middle of winter a few warm days will cause their green shoots to appear. Blooming will usually begin in spring, but even in the same garden they will flower irregularly rather than as a cohort. Daffodils remind me of middle school students.

One of the many things I’ve enjoyed about my career is having wonderful discussions with teachers and parents regarding the behaviors of middle school children. Middle school aged children—let’s just say the ages between eleven and fourteen-- are simply fascinating! Noted anthropologist Margaret Meade once called them betweenagers, and said that we are more dissimilar at this period of development that at any other time in our lives. If I’m in front of a group of adults leading a conversation regarding this phase of growth, I usually ask the group to raise their hands if they themselves enjoyed those days.

Rarely is a hand raised. There is always the tittering of nervous laughter in the room. I suspect that uncomfortable memories are bubbling up.

There’s the girl who is unhappy that no one notices her. Moments later she is horrified that “people are looking at me!” The once docile and compliant boy becomes too physical with his peers, and “keep your hands to yourself” (a fairly common phrase in preschool and kindergarten) reappears after an extended absence. Odd vocalizations and facial expressions, including dismissive snorts and eye rolls, become commonplace.

I have found that rude behavior increases dramatically at this age. The big surprise, however, is that these betweenagers are largely unaware of their rudeness. When challenged, they are almost always baffled by the adult’s “over reaction” to the event. Even when the adult is quietly advising corrective action, the child will demand to know why he’s being “yelled at.” Skillful and wise adults can often reach betweenagers with the news that certain behaviors are unacceptable. When this moment occurs, the betweenagers are horrified at their own actions! Their penitence is obvious.

Many years ago when I was head of an independent school in Virginia, a seasoned middle school teacher came into my office to voice her frustration with a language arts class. “How many times do I have to teach the same point?” she demanded. “Well,” I countered, “how many students do you have?”

That’s an exaggeration of middle school teaching, of course, but the point remains: we are more dissimilar at this age than at any other time in our lives. That’s why I think an academically competent third grade teacher could teach a high school course, and a high school teacher who understood child learning theory could function well in a third grade classroom. Neither would necessarily succeed in a middle school room.

The middle school years are tough on everyone, it seems. Some parents wonder what the school did to their lovely little boy or girl; some teachers wonder if the child has any discipline at home. And all children know at a gut level that their world is changing forever. Their full flower will come later in their schooling career. If we’re lucky, like an early daffodil, maybe we’ll get a glimpse of it along the way. Maybe a former student will come back to tell tales of high school or college.

Our job is to help them grow, supporting each other as well as those to whom we’ve entrusted our children. The great schools of the world will address this remarkable age with curricula and teachers who understand the challenge.