DEAR SHEENA,
The influenza epidemic and usual flow of illness are keeping us busy in both the clinic and hospital. A surprising number of staff and students are out of action but I don't know if these are vaccine failures or those who just never got around to having flu shots last autumn!
I caught myself telling stories to the students about that terrible flu epidemic when we were house officers in the Royal Infirmary. Do you remember how busy we were? We "borrowed" beds from every possible unit and had patients everywhere! The students obviously don't believe that we lived in the hospital and depended on one another for any time away from the wards, even for sleep. We put in a lot of long nights but the nurses made great greasy bacon and eggs and gallons of tea to resuscitate us for morning rounds. Cholesterol and gaining a few pounds were not problems in those days! We probably should not have relied so heavily on one another and the night nurse superintendent but there was a clear unwritten rule about not calling for more senior physicians and this applied particularly to the very few female housestaff. How many years did it take us to stop worrying if we "could cut it" on the prestigious units?
Most of the patients seemed to do well but I recall a handful of young men admitted during the epidemic with lungs appearing totally white on x-ray. They all died in spite of our efforts. The old physicians told us these were overwhelming staphylococcal infections but I wonder now about the true diagnosis. You looked drained when we had those cases. Although you would have given them superb care, I am grateful that you did not have to work with patients infected with HIV.
We managed to talk often, usually "shop" talk but often about how to combine careers with personal lives. We were both surprised to meet the right men at the right time but it all seemed very complicated. Women house officers were usually suspected of lack of commitment to medicine, and to get married certainly excluded any possibility of career advancement. I remember how intently we discussed all the potential implications of lives as physicians, wives, and possibly mothers. In the end, we knew we just had to stand up for one another at our weddings, and keep in touch as we worked through the complex pathways of our professions. Who would have thought I would end up in the middle of America in a completely different type of practice (but still with the original husband—you predicted that correctly)?
I miss our conversations on all topics from the mundane to the profound. I miss your gentle humor, wisdom, integrity, and unfailing confidence in people. In particular, I wish we had been able to see one another through all those ceremonies that mark the progress of life. I wonder what you would have thought of the way weddings, graduations, and other ceremonies are celebrated over here—they are very different from those we knew! But nearly 30 years ago, there was a storm and a terrible crash. You would have been an excellent professor, a wonderful wife and mother, and a complete person. I still miss you.
