"A hospital bed is a parked taxi with the meter running"
Groucho Marx (1890-1977)
A word of apology to my readers after being away from my blog for a while. I hope you haven't lost interest! Ten flights over the past 3-4 weeks to and from Washington, DC, Munich, Catania and Palermo in Sicily, Toronto, Houston and NYC have kept me busy and away but, now travel-weary, I'll try to pick up where I left off.
Letting us loose on real patients!
Having successfully reached the clinical years and getting out of the laboratory was liberating for me and my colleagues. We were now known as "externes", allowed to have special caduceus-shaped "eleve-medecin" stickers on our car windshields, wear long white frocks, and actually carry a stethoscope. We were "farmed out" to both University hospitals as well as ones in the suburbs and even further afar. In return, we had to take call, either in the wards or the ED's ("salles d'urgence"). We were at the beck and call of the ward attending as well as the nurses. If they wanted a blood pressure on someone at 2am, they would call you, awaking you out of a deep sleep.
Over the last four years, my extern assignments took me as far as the US (Yonkers and Syracuse), Charleroi in southern Belgium, and assorted communal hospitals such as Etterbeek, Ixelles, and L'Hopital Francais, mixed in with didactic lectures back at the University as well as getting to assist some pretty top-notch surgeons. My favorite rotation was in the Clinique de Braine-l'Alleud, a modern facility that was founded and run by Dr. Andre Wynens who, incidentally, was the President of the World Medical Association. He was a surgeon and was a pleasure to assist as was his staff of very accomplished physicians. The hospital was fairly close to Waterloo so just a hop, skip and jump from Lasne. Today, it has grown into a very large medical center.
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| Braine l'Alleud Clinic back during my time |
In 1983, almost ten years after I had graduated, we returned to Belgium with our 4 year old son, Marc. Young as he was, I wanted him to see where we lived and worked. I called the Braine-l'Alleud Clinic and asked if we could come visit as we had traveled all the way from Rochester. They were to expect our arrival. As we pulled up to the hospital entrance, I noticed the entire staff was assembled to greet us, doctors, nurses, and, of course, Dr. Andre Wynens himself!
The head nurse immediately recognized me from my student days and greeted me by saying: "Ce n'est que toi!!!!" which roughly translates into "Oh, it's only you!" She explained they were expecting an important American doctor to visit! Dr. Wynens approached me and, after shaking hands, asked me how things were at the Mayo Clinic. They were expecting someone from Rochester, Minnesota, not New York. When I explained this to him, he said "oh...Kodak!"
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| Braine l'Alleud today |
Once, while working at the Hospital Francais, I was in a ward working alongside a Belgian colleague. The patient was a little old wizened Flemish man who spoke no French. I prided myself on my grasp of language and actually spoke a bit of Dutch. The patient asked me: "Hoe lang moet ik leven?" (How long do I have to stay here?). I responded in my finest Dutch: "Een week" ( One week). He suddenly turned very pale and appeared frightened. My Belgian colleague pulled me aside and told me I misunderstood the question. "Hoe lang moet ik leven" actually meant "How long do I have to live!!!" I apologized profusely and thought of my Dutch ancestors rolling over in their graves.
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| The old Hospital Francais, scene of my "Dutch debacle" |
I still stay in touch with some of my fellow students many years later and, perhaps, on my next visit to Europe, will meet them again. They are all established Belgian physicians, either University faculty now or working throughout Belgium. The one I stay in frequent touch with is Phillipe Randour, a obstetrician-gynecologist in the Mons region. We both look back on those school days with fondness, sharing humor and our love of food and politics. It would be great to share a meal with them again. When we were on call, the hospitals would leave big steaks in the refrigerators, along with a bottle of red wine. Whoever was the best chef would cook for the rest of us.
Speaking of obstetrics, I did my obstetrical rotation in the communal hospital in Ixelles. We were required to live in the hospital for two week spans without going home. I had a nice little garret bedroom and Suzanne would visit me for dinner in my room. We had to deliver all the newborns for that period under the close observation of nurse-midwives who probably knew more than the physicians as they had trained so many generations of students. Towards the end of my rotation, Suzanne and I were having a nice romantic dinner when the phone rang..."Come quickly to the delivery room!!!" Suzanne had never seen a baby born so, I grabbed her and we both went running down to the DR. We were greeted by the sight of a multipara North-African woman on the table. She had no pre-natal care and was fully dilated. I had just seconds to gown up and put on gloves as this baby came flying out without any help from me. It was really an end-zone catch for me. The infant was fine and we returned to dinner with me explaining to Suzanne that childbirth is never this easy.
My favorite rotation was at the Brugmann University Hospital in plastic surgery where I worked with Madame Madeline LeJour. She was one of the finest plastic surgeons in Europe and is still known today for the LeJour Procedure for breast lift. I really learned a great deal from her and, at one time, considered becoming a plastic surgeon. She had also done a very radical procedure in Paris a few years before. A man had been jilted by his girlfriend and, feeling depressed, got very drunk and used the broken wine bottle to sever his penis. Over months, she built up a new one for him, using a series of skin flaps, and implanted a new urethra and a pump so that he had a fully-functioning sexual organ! The slides she showed us were unbelievable and highlighted her great skill. She was fun and never thought twice about changing in the same locker room with us before surgery, or, playfully tossing a silicon breast implant at me, telling me "today we're going to do silly surgery"!
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| Brugmann was in a nice park-like setting up near the Atomium |
Mme. LeJour was married to Professor Bellens, the Chief of Medicine at the St. Pierre University Hospital. We were all frightened of him as he was not a very kind individual to students. I couldn't see him with Madeline who was kind and patient with her students. Years later, on that same visit with our son back to Belgium, I had learned that our landlady, Jacqueline Colet had, unfortunately, committed suicide a few years before. Marc and I were walking down the main street in Lasne and suddenly I hear my name being called. There in a nice gray Porsche was her widower, our former landlord, Dr. Jean Colet. He invited us to hop in as he wanted to show me his new home, a villa up in the surrounding hills. So, with little Marc in the jump seat, we took off and, within a few minutes, we were driving down a long driveway pulling up to a beautiful villa. As we entered, there was a woman sitting in the living room with her back to us. "Sandy, I'd like you to meet my new wife". As she turned, the very familiar face of Madeline Lejour appeared...and we had a lovely reunion. The last I heard, Jean had passed away and Madeline who was living in a very modern home in Nashville, Tennessee with her son, a radiologist, died in 2015.
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| One of my medical mentors, Dr. Madeleine Lejour |
In the Spring of 1973, I was assigned to a medical ward at Etterbeek Hospital. I was in the middle of something when my good friend and fellow student, Mark Hammel, now a urologist in Royal Oak, Michigan, came running in. "Sandy, there's a guy visiting from Time Magazine and he's doing an article on Americans studying medicine abroad." We ran down the corridors and there was Prof. Tinkelmans sitting at the bedside of a patient surrounded by American students. As the photographer was about to get his shot, Mark and I pushed ourselves into the scene, (yes, we were very early adapters of photo bombing!) and in the April 16 edition of Time Magazine with Sen. Sam Ervin on the cover (remember Watergate?), there was a nice photo of Mark and Sandy! I think I bought ten copies of it.
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| My first photo bomb: that's me on the left, Ron Koval, and a little bit of Mark Hammel's face. |
I'll try to keep a more regular schedule of writing from now on, now that travels are done.
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