An Appreciation Of A Doctor

Three days before I was born in 1983, my dad had a rather nasty accident at his job.

As a repair foreman in a factory, he was inspecting a portion of a boiler that wasn't working correctly. As he reached out to turn a valve, the pipe it was on exploded without warning, embedding shrapnel in his arm.

Had he attempted to inspect the gauge on the pipe visually, he very probably would have died. As it was, he had a deep, severe wound in his left arm that had severed arteries. (He had the presence of mind to press the wound, and to continue doing so even though others wanted him to take his hand off to look at it.) An injury like that could have cost him his hand.

But it didn't. He was rushed to the nearest big hospital, in Toledo, Ohio, where his arm was operated on by a Dr. John Howard. He still suffers from stiffness and a lack of motor control in his left hand, but otherwise he retains full use of his arm. (He also used to charge my siblings and I a nickel to see his scar.) If his hand had been lost, it is very possible that he could have lost his job and had a hard time finding a new one, which would have dramatically affected literally my entire life.

Dr. Howard died in mid-March, a world-famous surgeon known for greatly improving surgical techniques used on battlefields and in emergency rooms, and in numerous diseases of the pancreas. It is very likely that he touched the life of someone you know, though presumably far less directly than in my case. (On another note, it has also been rumored for many years that he inspired aspects of the character Trapper John from M*A*S*H. On a semi-related note, Dr. Howard doesn't seem to have a Wikipedia entry.)

I doubt I could muster the eloquence that he deserves, so I will simply say: While I never met Dr. Howard*, he will be missed.

*Technically, I did, and he was probably one of the first people who was neither family or maternity ward staff to come into physical contact with me, but as I was less than a month old, my memories of it are... less than perfect, shall we say.

-Signing off.