When Your Child is Ill

My parents owned hundreds of books, belonged to several book-of-the month clubs, and considered books worthy of display in one's home; much like art. The only books hidden away were written by Mr. Alfred Kinsey. But, never fear; I found them anyway as a naive but curious twelve year old, stashed in the back of the guestroom closet. I read fast, furiously, and frequently, always careful to put the books back in their not-so-childproof hiding place. In retrospect, those books taught me things no one else bothered to educate me about.

But I digress, wildly off topic.

If there was something or someone that started me on the path, it would definitely be the innocent looking book entitled: When Your Child is Ill by Samuel Karelitz, M.D. This hardcover book-of-the month selection from 1958 found  a prominent spot among the books in our living-room bookshelf. I don't think Mom read the book but I certainly did. Voraciously.

The introductory remarks in this book includes the following passage....
"When Your Child is Ill is a book for intelligent mothers. It is not a substitute for the doctor: it tells her when she needs him (love that); and it helps to answer the questions parents often ask themselves before and after the doctor's visit. Dr. Karelitz's object in writing for parents so fully and frankly is not to alarm but to inform and how to treat her sick child herself, but rather to tell her what symptoms to look for and which are danger signals.  This book, so full of facts, will also be of use to nurses, school matrons (huh?) and social workers--in fact to any person who may have to deal with sick children."


This book simultaneously scared me to death and pulled me back into its pages with a kind of warped fascination. I was a healthy kid but succumbed to the usual: measles, chickenpox, and croup-like upper respiratory illnesses. Whenever I was sick enough to stay home from school, I'd pull this book off the shelf and devour the pages that discussed whatever symptoms were most prominent in the moment. The problem was (and to this day); whatever complication there might be from any relatively benign illness......I figured I'd get. Meningitis, encephalitis, rabies, liver failure.....and on it went.

Mom eventually confiscated this book from me. "You get too upset when you read this.", she'd say. I'd beg her let me read just a bit more. If the book disappeared, it was never well hidden. I'd always find the book and read voraciously about all manner of horrid thing that might happen.

Did this book fuel a budding interest in things medical?  I believe so. When my parents moved from Aruba back to Texas and were packing up their belongings, I spied this book and felt a peculiar bond. Mom told me to take it, jokingly. I was just finishing up my first year of medical school at the time and had come to Aruba for a last visit home.  That was 35 years ago, 1977.

I never see this book, which resides in the back on my closet with other old books, that I don't stop and remember a very young, impressionable girl.

Typing Skills

My Dad was ahead of his day. As school superintendent of the Lago School in Aruba, he insisted that every student learn to type. Mind you, this was back in the day when typewriters looked sort of like the one below. This was also the time when young men launched into careers that had little to do with typing skills whereas women, be the teachers, clerical staff, or housewives benefited from knowing how to type without looking at the keys.

My brother learned to type in high school in Aruba and when he went away to college he was a hot ticket amongst his peers who asked him to type up their papers and reports for class. He earned money by the page. He's still a pretty good typist, probably far better than other men his age.

Hands down, typing was the best skill I mastered in school from the perspective of continuous utilization.  Knowing how to type fast and with accuracy paid off. Countless hours saved. Time is money. More time makes way for more rest.

These days we think nothing of younger folks pecking away at their computer keyboards. I'm not sure how people learn to type these days; probably either  entirely self taught or with a typing tutor on line. The learning starts earlier and earlier; I'd predict many begin as grade school students if not before. In Aruba, back in the late 1960's we learned the 'old school' way where the keys were covered over with heavy duty tape.  We learned to touch type as opposed to the "search and peck" style I see some contemporaries of mine utilize.

Although typing wasn't a necessary skill in Medicine until the early 1990's when email hit the scene, everyone in the field depends on the skill nowadays. The electronic medical record, a prime example of how medical documentation changed in the past ten years makes my point. We type constantly; clinic notes, communications, emails, and other updates fill the gaps between seeing patients. Many of us bring work home in the evening; although this may involve dictation, typing is more common.

Typewriters are a thing of the past except in the lives of  'eccentrics' or the technically challenged. Who among us is not a slave to the keyboard?

I'm grateful that my Dad, who at one time practiced his skills at the typewriter, encouraged all of his students to get into that typing class. Now.

Three Doctors From a Class of Thirteen

In 1969, the graduating class of Lago High School in Aruba numbered thirteen students. Mere freshmen in high school, we were considered "the seniors" because we would all be leaving Aruba to complete the remainder of our education stateside. The American school for children of employes of the Lago Oil and Transport Company in Aruba operated a  K-12 program for decades. In the late 1960's, the company responded to economic pressures by truncating the school program after grade 9. The company paid for employees to send their youngsters to prep school in the U.S. mainland; a purely financial move with little regard for how the decision might affect young students or their parents.

I won't comment here about the effect leaving home at the age of fifteen to move thousands of miles away from home when cell phones were nonexistent and overseas telephone calls and cablegrams were byzantine methods of communications. Snail mail in the strictest sense kept us in touch. Those were rugged days. More on that later.

Back to the graduating class of thirteen students; 6 young men and 7 young women. We studied Algebra I, World History, Spanish 2, Biology, and English together in grade 9.  We hung out after school and on weekends at the beach and the Esso Club. After "graduation", we split up to attend stateside schools. I landed out at St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin because of the proximity to my sister, 12 years my senior who lived in Houston, 150 miles down the road. Close but not too close.

The interesting statistic about that class of thirteen students is that three became physicians and all three were women.  Here we are in our yearbook photos from 1969.

The daughter of the physician director of the Lago Hospital in Aruba, she attended medical school and trained as a Psychiatrist. She lives in Santa Fe.

Originally from Canada, she and her family left Aruba shortly after graduation.  She went to medical school in Canada and became a Family Practice physician. After many years in general practice, she pursued an interest in skin care and esthetic medicine. She operates medical spas in Canada  and markets a line of skin care products.











 


And here I am. At the time, I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. An acute illness and hospital stay several years later would light the fire on my dream.











The three of  us remain in practice.

** photos taken from the Lago School yearbook, 1969