Doctor, Plumber, Indian Chief

I cut my thumb yesterday. I was cutting my post-lunch apple, and got a little too enthusiastic with the knife. Now I have a ½" slit in my thumb and Steri-Strips holding it together for a few days until it stays together on its own.

I sat holding it through our weekly team meeting until about an hour-and-a-half had passed from the stabbing and it was still bleeding. Then I pinged my boss and e-mailed my team to tell them I was leaving to go to Urgent Care. In my e-mail to the team, I said, "Stop laughing - I am NOT a cook. I do many things well, but food-related things are not included in that list!"

So I got to Urgent Care and sat for over an hour before the doctor came in. Never mind that there was only one other patient in the whole facility. Thank God for iPods and newly downloaded SciFi novels.

When the doctor came in, he looked, evaluated, and then reached up into the cupboard to get the supplies he needed. Watch out! His too-short, untucked polo shirt rose up and his sagging pants were revealed, hanging way too low on his butt. Honey, I don't even want to see cracks like that on my plumber, much less on my doctor!

One thing about my daddy, the doctor. Boy, did he dress. It was even mentioned at his memorial service — what a fabulous wardrobe he had and how well he wore those fine threads. He would never have gone into the office without a tie, much less in an untucked polo shirt. Hmmm, did he even own a polo shirt? I don't think so. I think he wore freshly laundered and pressed button-down collar shirts when he went fishing. And the now-common practice of doctors wearing scrubs in the office? Never! The only time Daddy wore scrubs was when he actually scrubbed in to surgery and wore hospital-provided scrubs. He did not own a pair of scrubs. (The more I read and reread this post as I'm editing it, I cannot remember ever seeing Daddy in a t-shirt. I only ever saw him in cotton shirts that buttoned down the front. Freshly-pressed cotton shirts.)

He and Mother built a new house shortly after they got me and moved in at the end of 1951, when I was 18 months old. The house was on two acres on the shore of Lake Maitland. My brothers shared a bedroom that was big enough for two double beds and lots of space besides. Picture a hotel room with two doubles, then increase that size by 50% — that was the size of my brothers' room. Both my brothers' room and my parents' room had walk-in closets, a concept I believe was fairly new in that era. At one end of Mother and Daddy's closet were built-in drawers, 30" or 36" wide, for Daddy's underwear, topped by about six shallow drawers for all Daddy's ties. When he first put on a tie at 6:00 a.m., he would fastidiously tie it in a Windsor or half-Windsor or whatever. Then when he would get home at 11:00 that night, he would loosen the tie and place it in the drawer still tied. The next time he chose to wear that tie, his morning routine went a little faster. He would only untie his ties when he sent them to the cleaner. Lazy? Nah. Expeditious.

Maybe this is a standard guy-thing to do, but I've had four husbands and seen the way a few other guys live, and I've never observed this practice elsewhere.

Back to scrubs and surgery. Southern Missionary College (now Southern Adventist University), where I spent my first miserable year of college, had a nursing program. The student nurses pursuing a B.S. degree would spend their junior year in Orlando at Florida Hospital. I had friends who went through the program and would tell me stories about my daddy. In fact, my high school boyfriend, Jim Seeley, now a doctor in Tennesee, got mad at me once because my daddy had told an off-color joke in the operating room when his sister was doing her rotation there.

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The sort of "off-color" joke that Daddy would tell while in surgery:
A guy's cat had three kittens. He named one Fluffy 'cause he was the fluffiest. He named the next one Sleepy 'cause he was the sleepiest. He named the last one Liberace 'cause he was the peeing-est (er, pianist — get it?).
Okay, in 1966 as a fledgling pianist, I thought the joke was great.
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One other story about Daddy and his surgery routines. I think this story comes courtesy of my best friend Gail. When Daddy changed into his scrubs, he would put on the pair of shoes he had worn in medical school the first time he performed surgery. He would wear these as he scrubbed and walked into the operating room. Then he would walk up to the operating table, where a warm blanket had been placed on the floor. He would step out of his ancient shoes, and stand on the warm blanket while he worked. Some people may have thought that rather wierd. I find it charming.

Back to my thumb — here's the good news. I've realized today that one can type without using the left thumb. Woo hoo!