On the first Saturday of December I spent eight hours on a gurney in the emergency room at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center wired to equipment monitoring my ticker in an effort to find out why its tocker was off-kilter.
Because I never moved from the ER gurney in those eight hours, I became a captive audience to several real emergencies, including a mountain snow accident victim brought in by helicopter and a local car accident victim brought in by ambulance, and was able to witness exactly how the emergency room functions.
There were perhaps 35 medical professionals — nurses, med students, physician assistants, doctors and specialists — all gathered inside a veritable maze of computers and desks.
At one point, 10 of these professionals suddenly donned yellow plastic gowns and gloves, in addition to their ever-present COVID-19 masks, and stood alert outside my half-curtained gurney cubby.
Then the hallway door opened and a helicopter ambulance crew wheeled in a spinal injury, flown in from a mountain accident.
The process of transferring the injured person from stretcher to gurney required many trained hands in delicate precision, hence the yellow-gowned group.
An orthopedic intern seemed to be in charge, and his intake questions of the young athlete’s accident indicated his own enthusiasm for sports. If he wasn’t a jock, he did a good imitation.
He then shifted gears to another patient in another curtained cubby nearby who’d been gurneyed in from an ambulance with a foot injury from a car accident.
I felt privileged to overhear his winning bedside manner, his reassuring words and his expression of sympathy to the patient for her accident. His tone of voice was sincere. No perfunctory politeness here.
Then he walked by my own cubby and I was amazed to see that he was about 30 years old.
At the end of my 25 years as a high school English teacher, I became discouraged that technology seemed to be desensitizing kids to emotional values. But this recent experience in DHMC’s emergency room has brightened my outlook.
In fact, most of the personnel in the ER also appeared to be in their late 20s or early to late 30s. Even my cardiology physician was about 35.
When my cellphone wouldn’t work, he offered his own so I could call my veterinarian to make arrangements for my dog.
And he offered to call my significant other, herself a retired cardiology nurse who I’ve known since we were in high school, to discuss my situation.
And my ER nurse, another 30-something, took several minutes to try to connect my cellphone to the hospital Wi-Fi, without success. Be of good cheer, he said, your phone will definitely send and receive email no matter what location at the hospital. I thanked him for his jolly attitude. He made me feel less helpless.
After several hours on my gurney, I asked a nurse if I could have something to eat.
“Yes,” came the reply. “How about a turkey sandwich?”
“How about two?” I asked, and she promptly brought them.
I started to pay attention to her desk and found there was much laughter among the three nurses as they worked together. It was uplifting! After all, I was a temporary occupant in a room where things could quickly take a dreadful turn for the worst. It was good medicine for me and others to be reminded that life is laughter and to appreciate the kindness of professionals who take the time to help you with your heart, and your smartphone.
My hope was buoyed for the world that my generation of teachers had helped create.
Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, wrote an article in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1976 titled “Anatomy of an Illness (As Perceived by the Patient).”
In it, Cousins detailed how, when faced with a diagnosis of collagen degenerative illness, which often results in disability and death, he helped cure himself by consciously using humor and enlisting doctors to allow a patient to manage the atmosphere of his own illness. It became a best-selling book about patients taking charge of their health.
The generation of medical professionals I met at DHMC’s emergency room clearly inherited Cousins’ philosophy of creating an atmosphere of cheerful uppers, in the midst of the downer of illness. Maybe DHMC really stands for “Dartmouth-Hitchcock Merry Caregivers.”
I hope Norman Cousins would chuckle in approval.
Paul Keane lives in Hartford Village.