I’m not sure when dawn happens these days, but once again we were up before the crack. Several hours before. For the fourth or fifth time this month, one of us has an early morning doctor’s appointment far, far away. Well, Astoria this time. But even so…
“Why weren’t we warned? Why didn’t someone tell us that retirement is all about doctoring?” asked my sainted husband.
“One of those ‘secrets of old age’ that my mother hinted at,” was all I could think of to say. That and the fact that it’s the age of specialists. I make it ten (TEN!!) different doctors that we see between the two of us. Some we share and I didn’t even count them twice. It really is appalling.
Ear Doctor – “NEXT!!”
And, yet, when I think about it, even in my grandparents’ day, there were specialists. That was when going to Portland was a twenty-four hour adventure that involved (for my grandmother) horse and buggy, train, and steamship. (For my grandfather, no buggy.) Still, there were only two doctors that my grandmother wrote of in her correspondence to her eldest daughter, Medora. One was her eye doctor and the other was a “female specialist.”
About the latter she wrote on November 22, 1915: Yes, I think you had better plan to be home next year, as I must have my operation as it may add a good many years to my life, in fact must be done, and the doctor says I will be a year regaining normal strength.
Medora was then a senior at Portland Academy and the decision was made that she would stay home rather than continue on to Stanford so that she could help with her five younger siblings. She died suddenly in her sleep on January 18, 1916. My grandmother never did have her operation, yet she lived until 1954 – aged 76.
As for her eyes – after years of being legally blind, in 1949 she and my grandfather would fly to New York where she underwent one of the earliest cataract surgeries and lens transplants. She had both eyes done and she was in the hospital for almost a month. For the rest of her life she never got over the miracle of having her sight back. Perhaps it is that memory of her that has prompted my belief in specialists… Certainly, when compared to the journey to New York City, Astoria doesn’t seem very far…
I shall throw salt over my left shoulder, make three turns and whatever else superstitution says to do. I go to a PA and an optomitrest both here on the Peninsula and that is the extent of my doctoring. Guess my midwestern German genes are serving me well.