This morning we return to NYC and the Summer after the Big Bus Trip around America
illustrated above is the Big Bus Trip with the stops along the way…it should be noted that I travelled with David Beatty, a friend from Lake Oswego, Oregon days who was the same age as me and who whose parents were as confident as mine about sending us on a bus trip..David and I travelled from Lake Oswego to Los Angeles, where we stayed with some of David’s relatives and then onto Phoenix, Arizona where David’s grandparents lived…we stayed with them for awhile and I left David there with his grandparents and then I continued on to Dallas, Texas, Jackson, Mississippi and then back to NYC.
David’s grandparents lived on a ranch outside of Phoenix and we stayed in a casita or guest house on the ranch…David’s grandpa woke us up after letting us sleep in on the first day we were there…as he did and we were fully awake, still lying in our beds, his grandpa said: “When you wake up every morning, always shake your shoes out to make sure no scorpions have taken up residence in your shoes, overnight.” He proceeded to show us how to do that with each of our shoes…you can bet that every morning we were on the ranch that’s exactly what we did and we did it from the safety of our beds so our feet would not inadvertently step on a scorpion while we were shaking our shoes out…apparently, scorpions like the warm, moist environment of peoples shoes or boots…I would not say that we were terrified of scorpions but we sure shook our shoes out, over and over again, just to make sure that no scorpion was taking up temporary residence in our shoes…
A quick word about the Beatty family and their influence on my growing up in Lake Oswego…David’s Dad was Robert Beatty and he was a full-on, avid outdoorsman, meaning he hunted and fished every chance he got which was damn near every weekend…David’s Dad would include me on those trips, sometimes and sometimes, even my Dad would join us…[the foregoing was written on February 18th]
and with that observation, I am reminded that today, February 19th, is Mom’s birthday and Dad’s death day…our comments when Dad died at approx. 4:15 AM, according to the hospice people in attendance, were that he had given Mom the ultimate birthday present which was him joining her wherever and they could now both reside there, together…still sad, today, at Dads passing but it is tempered with the knowledge that they are now with each other…Mom passed in 1989 and I still miss her presence in my life…would have loved dearly for Jennifer to have been able to meet her just once…but, alas and alack, that was never in the cards…
so, today is February 20, 2024 and it has been 9 years and a day since Dad passed…
Anywhoo, getting back to Robert Beatty and David…The Beatty’s were our closest friends and they lived directly opposite us on York Road, in Lake Oswego…
so that is a photo of what our house on 855 York Road, Lake Oswego looks like today…funnily enough these owners have a motorhome, as well…
getting back to the story at hand which is the Summer after the Big Bus Trip around America while we were still living in NYC…so at some point, I had expressed a desire to become a doctor at age 14 to Mom and Dad, so they decided with me that I would spend that Summer working with some research doctors who worked at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons…there were three doctors doing research on what body chemicals would enter and leave the heart before, during and after a heart attack…as I arrived there to begin my first days as an intern with them, they showed me and took me step-by-step step through what I would be doing each day they were ready to study and sample the heart…the researchers/doctors had to be able to take blood samples for later analysis of all the body chemicals entering and leaving the heart in real-time as the heart attack occurred…so how did they accomplish this, you ask?
what’s the Secret, Dad?
We used dogs from the streets of NYC that ended up in the pound where stray cats and dogs were housed…the doctors had an agreement with the pound that they could pick up and use these dogs for their research…it should be noted here that sometimes the dogs died and sometimes, they survived their medically induced heart attacks…
My job entailed prepping the dogs for surgery by the doctors and how I did that was very interesting, to me at the time since I wanted to be a doctor some day…the dogs were mildly sedated, first using their food as a vehicle for the sedation to take effect…I would then go and get the dog out of it’s cage and place it on a special wooden table, shaped like a V…this V-shaped table would be used by us during the operation/simulated heart attack…so I would retrieve the dog from its cage, place its now limp body on the special-built table which was on a modified-wheeled gurney and take the ancient elevator up from the basement where the dogs were housed to the third floor where the doctors had set up their modified operating room/ lab…then one of the doctors would calculate the sedative needed to knock the dog all the way out…in the basement, I would weigh each dog and then tell the doctors and he would calculate how much sedative was needed to keep the dog sedated during the three hour operation…the doctors soon showed me how to do this sedation on my own and by myself…I would take the syringe with the correct amount of sedative loaded in it and then find a vein in the dog’s ear and slowly inject the sedative…I guess it should be noted that here I was a 14 year old in 1965 using heavy narcotics to sedate these dogs,..looking back, it was an amazing amount of trust that these doctors placed with me as I wielded the narcotics and administrated it to the dogs…and yes, the doctors always were there when I administered the narcotics in the dogs ear…
now the dog was truly out and my next task was to use a fluoroscope to find a very specific place in the dog’s heart…the fluoroscope was an older version of an X-Ray machine and we used it to see the heart in real-time to insert a catheter about three feet long into a very specific vein (adjacent to the jugular vein) in which I would make an incision and then insert the catheter…two things to note here: the catheter had a very specific bend in it about three inches from the end of the catheter…this bent catheter was prepared the night before surgery by placing and taping it vertically in a fridge we had with the bend in it and left overnight while taped down…this bent catheter when placed properly in the heart would be used to sample the heart blood before, during and after the medically induced heart attack…
using the fluoroscope on the still beating heart, I would “see” the catheter move down the vein to the heart…when I got the catheter in position, I would use the bend to find a tiny hole in the heart muscle and using a very fine touch, I would slip the bent catheter into this hole and voila, it was done…apparently, this catheter when placed properly ended up in a venous cavity within the heart, allowing the doctors to continuously sample the blood ending up in the cavity..
I should say that this catheter placement was crucial to the doctors experiments and it had to be done properly…some days, I was able to do this perfectly and other days, I was not successful and one of the doctors would help me get it right…so now the dog was ready and positioned on the wooden operating table and then the doctors would take over and begin their experiments…soon, the doctors let me take over more and more of the prep work of getting the dog ready for their experiments…this entailed me using a scalpel to make an incision between the third and fourth ribs after I had shaved the dog’s fur off of the incision area…as I cut open the dog, we would use a soldering iron to cauterize the small bleeds in the epidermis of the dog…this burning flesh left a foul odor so we would burn incense sticks in the operating room while performing this prep work… once I had a big enough and deep enough incision, I would use a ratcheting chest retractor to slowly open up the chest cavity and expose the still beating heart…at this point, the dog was ready for the doctors to take over from me and begin their experiments..
that was my Summer, spent at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, helping them help us to understand the body chemical interactions before, during and after a heart attack…I am forever grateful to those unnamed doctors and my parents who encouraged me and trusted me to diligently do my best to help them…finally, as we now know, I did not become a doctor but the experience of trust by these doctors in me was invaluable to a growing child-man who had already completed a bus trip around America and now was ready to tackle another challenge with them, as mentors for one who expressed a desire to be a doctor, eventually…I was only later that I discovered Mom and Dad made a donation to the Red Cross which in turn, got me the Summer internship with these three fantastic doctors…quite a gift Mom and Dad made to me that Summer in NYC