POSTSCRIPT

postscript JAN/FEB 2022 / DONNA MOFFLY

He told me if I wasn’t careful, when I grew up, I’d have lollapaloozas. Whatever those were, I didn’t want them. OF MEDICINE AND MEMORIES

Top docs. All docs should be tops. There can be crooked lawyers and incompetent architects, but somehow I expect the best from the medical world— after all the training and that impressive promise to Hippocrates. No bottom docs allowed (unless they’re proctologists).

I must say I wasn’t wild about Dr. Ruggles, my pediatrician in Cleveland long ago. He embarrassed me. I must have been a little chubby, because he told me if I wasn’t careful, when I grew up I’d have lollapaloozas. Whatever those were, I didn’t want them.

But I loved Dr. Thomas, our eye doctor. One night I stood by the bathroom door switching the lights on and off to tease my older brother who was on the can reading comic books. I’d just turned them out when he threw the shower curtain chain at me and shattered my glasses. My quick-thinking mother poured baby oil in my eyes and called Dr. Thomas, who came rushing over to pick out the shards.

I liked our ear-nose-and-throat man, too. He had a good-looking son named Dutch. But I’m not sure Dr. Rosenberger was crazy about me. Once when my little brother had a sinus infection and the good doctor was struggling to settle him down in the chair, I yelled from the waiting room: “Don’t let him do it, Mike! Don’t let him do it!”

And I loved Dr. King, our internist, who Dad used to take on fishing trips with him to Canada, along with an oxygen tank in case he had another heart attack. I laugh remembering him—ever the doctor—trying to undo a lemon wedge wrapped in gauze at dinner at the Statler. But he had real soul. When my beloved grandfather was in the hospital dying of cancer, my mother said: “Boyd, isn’t there something we can do to end this misery?” Dr. King never answered her, but by the next day Papa Rudy had quietly slipped away.

Then the Moffly children came along. When Audrey was thirteen, we thought it time to switch her to a grownup doctor. So I took her to my internist and quietly told his nurse that she’d agreed to some shots, but please try to slip in a physical, too, so she could play sports at her new school. Next thing I knew, our daughter came streaking out of the examining room, the nurse and doctor in hot pursuit, and we all ended up in the Dearfield Medical building parking lot. “She needs a shrink,” huffed my internist. But Dr. Larkin, her pediatrician, laughed his head off and said: “She doesn’t need a shrink. She needs a lady doctor.” Enter Dr. Sennatt, and all was well.

There’s a special place in my heart for doctors who trust you with their cell phone numbers— and I’ve got two, plus our vet, Dr. Zeide. He even made a house call when we had to put our little tuxedo cat to sleep—at twenty-four probably the oldest cat he’d ever cared for. Skinny Vinny never weighed much more than seven pounds and had not only survived our house fire but all the “sleeping around” Jack and I had to do afterwards. “How did Vinny manage to live so long?” I asked Dr. Zeide, who replied, “Because he was always thin and very adaptable.” Both qualities I’ll never possess.

Let that be a lesson. You can learn a lot from doctors.