Family Archaeology

Item #UmpteenHundredFiftySix from the collection of Dad's stuff: a five-inch by seven-inch black six-ring binder stuffed to one-inch-thick, full of worn-edge pages, the cover reinforced with medical tape.

In my dad's household we didn't use duct tape. Since Dad was in the medical profession, we used medical tape for everything. We used it to tape ankles, repair book bindings, and hold the bumpers on the car. You name it, we used medical tape to keep it in one piece.

I opened the cover to discover why it was this little black book needed so much structural support. The addresses inside revealed a lifespan of at least three decades. Three locations graced the inside cover (written on patches of medical tape): University of Vermont Medical Center (1960s); Cincinnati General Hospital (1970s); and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (1980s and '90s). This book had seen a lot of action.

Belying the inadequate space within the book's covers lay a packet of 3x5 cards, banded together. 3x5s were my dad's bread and butter. Anything he ever needed to remember he'd write on those cards. He had a permanent stash in his front shirt pocket. If he needed to remember to get milk and butter at the store, he'd write that on a 3x5 card. If he needed to have someone's phone number for later, he'd write that down. If he suddenly realized which branch of the Indo-European linguistic family tree the Czech language belonged to, and wanted to keep from forgetting it again, he'd whip out a 3x5 card and scribble it down.

Dad's kitchen was like a Rolodex turned inside out. Phone numbers, addresses, things to do, messages for Chris and me, trivia about dinosaurs . . . all these things had been written down and attached to corkboards, walls, tabletops (with medical tape). Was it a weakness or a strength? Dad had everything written down.

This little black book, I discovered turning the pages, was Dad's "cheater" for medical practice. Do all physicians have one of these? Or just my dad? In alphabetical order, the book contains an encyclopedic survey of first aid, drug information (including costs of basic antibiotics per 5-day dosage), and disease symptoms. It's all written with the elegance of medical shorthand. (Chris and I learned how to abbreviate "before" by writing "a" with a line over it, and "after" by "p" with a line over it, without ever taking a Latin class, because we knew Dad's shorthand.)

Need to know whether to give morphine to someone having an asthma attack?

Labyrinthitis. Who knew? Suggested drugs and contraindications for vertigo: it's all here (cataloged under "E[ar]N[ose, and]T[hroat]).

Even a hand-drawn, cross-sectional diagram of the wrist and the muscles and tendons that move across the bones of the wrist (below, with red labels). I'm pretty sure that Dad wouldn't have used this at the operating table. I do picture him, however, sitting with a patient who has carpal tunnel syndrome and will need surgery, explaining slowly how the tendons lay upon each other in sheaths, and what it will take to correct her trigger finger. How handy to have an anatomical diagram right in his medical bag:

Or maybe all this was written here to facilitate my dad's long-term memory. I know for myself that often when I write things down--even if I never look at the copy again--I remember better the material that I wrote. Maybe this was Dad's "memory book," where he rehearsed with his fingers the things he wanted to have at the front of his mind for a life of medical practice.

Here's one I laughed at when I turned the page:

Yeah: "snake bite." I remember Dad telling stories about his nights in the ER at Hazelton (northeast Pennsylvania) General Hospital. He told us that on a Friday or Saturday night, especially on a full moon, sooner or later some guy would show up who had been dared to kiss a rattlesnake. With courage helped along by high doses of ethanol, he would take on the challenge and end up with a bite on the nose. That's what you do in the coal regions on a slow weekend, I guess.

I don't understand half of the entries because of the medical abbreviations and terminology, and I know that much of it is probably now outdated in terms of doses and approaches used for specific illnesses or injuries. But I am impressed with the breadth of information in this little tome. I am also struck by the effort that has gone into something that I consider obsolete: the hand-written notebook. My hand aches at the thought of putting pen to paper for that many strokes! For that reason above the others, this is quite an archaeological find.

~emrys