First Frontiers
Excerpt from "First Frontiers":
Back in Lansing, I
saw the little fellow was in grave
trouble. His parents and many brothers and sisters waited
silently in the anteroom of the hospital. They were Mexican
migrants, from the central Michigan produce fields.
We began by anesthetizing the child. With him in a
propped up position, I eased a child's five millimeter
bronchoscope between his vocal cords. There, just below the
cords, almost horizontal and not quite blocking the airway
was the nickel.
I was able to rotate and grasp the coin with forceps, but I
had to be extremely careful not to damage the vocal cords;
for the bronchoscope, along with the forceps and coin, all
had to be withdrawn at the same time, since the coin was
too large to be brought up through the bronchoscope. I laid
the apparatus, along with the deadly nickel, on the table.
Instantly, the child began to breathe well and the dark
little face brightened.
I went directly to the waiting room and told the parents I
had removed the coin and that their son would be fine. The
room erupted in smiles and rapid Spanish. The father
clutched my arm.
"What did you do with the nickel?"
I reached in my pocket and gave him a nickel.
This
first-of-a-kind medical narrative takes
you back 50 years and holds you spellbound
as Dr. Stringer pulls together each chapter's
story with satires, devotion and love
From a Louisiana Village beginning to thoracic
surgeon and chief-of-staff in a nationally
recognized chest hospital, the Stringer story is not an autobiography, but
rather a joyful,
warm accounting of the persons and circumstances that made his life a frontier.
Where
else but in his "First Frontiers" can you learn what it was like to fly a single
engine
airplane through Michigan's winter skies to the Upper Peninsula in order to
operate on
critically ill tuberculosis patients? And once arrived, have to land in meadows
and on
packed-down mine tailings!
Or where else can you listen in while "C.J." talks another doctor through an
unusual
surgery by telephone 500 miles away!
And then there is the case of the man and the dill pickle who ...
But shouldn't you read it for yourself?
