Tale of an Unlikely Pediatrician

Downstate Medical school was close enough to our house so that Mickey could live at home. The house had to be as quiet as a mortuary so that he could study. My parents wanted to prove that all the medical schools were wrong for not accepting him. At the time, I was a sophomore in high school. I needed to study too, but certainly not with the same intensity as my brother. One day, I hung over the edge of the couch doing my geometry homework while watching a ball game on television. “Pipe down!” my father yelled. “Your brother’s trying to study.” “Big deal. So am I.” “Paul, please pick up the order at the appetizing store.” My mother was always asking me to run the errands and pick up the lox, pickled herring and bagels. “Why can’t Mickey go for a change?” I shouted. “He’s going to be a doctor and needs to study. Someday when it’s your turn you’ll understand.” “All I understand is that he’s the God. He doesn’t do anything around here.” My parents weren’t the only ones taking advantage of me. It was my brother, too. “Hey kid, would you mind getting me a pack of cigarettes?” he asked. “I have to study.” I wanted to tell him that he could stick it in his ear, but instead I trudged off to the store and grudgingly obliged. At the end of his first year, my brother took a course in clinical chemistry, to learn, among other things, how to perform hemoglobin determinations from finger stick blood. It was a Saturday and he needed to practice what he had learned. “I tried to stick myself, but I really couldn’t manipulate all the equipment,” he said. “It just didn’t work out. I’d appreciate it if you would let me stick your finger. I’m going to be on the wards next year and really have to get good at this. I promise it won’t hurt.” What you mean is that it won’t hurt you, I thought. “Okay, but I’m meeting friends in an hour to go to the movies.” “We’ll be done way before that.” My brother milked the blood to the tip of my left middle finger and stuck it gingerly with a lancet. I winced. Very little blood flowed. “I’ll have to try again,” he said. I stood there with my left middle finger still extended and shrugged. His second stick was much harder and there was a good flow of blood. But this time he had trouble filling the pipette and the blood clotted in the tube. “Just one more time, please,” he begged. I scowled. “Okay, but hurry I don’t want to be late.” My brother penetrated my finger for a third time. This attempt was also unsuccessful, as the blood clotted again. I screamed, “It hurts and I won’t do it anymore. Besides, I have to meet my friends.” “Thanks anyway. Somehow, I’ll manage to practice on myself.” I went around the corner to see a double feature at the Crown theater on Empire Boulevard. The first picture was about Count Dracula. Every time he went on one of his blood hunting expeditions, I winced. The second feature was a war movie. When blood splattered the screen, I rubbed the tips of my fingers with my thumb. I rewarded myself for my ordeal with an extra bag of popcorn. I came home with a pounding headache, but before I could tell anyone, my father said, “Your brother needs you. He’s in his room.” Why didn’t my father even ask about me--about how the movies were? All he said was, ‘your brother needs you.’ I entered my brother’s room and saw him still trying unsuccessfully to stick himself. I wondered if he had tried all that time or he had started again when he heard me come home. He looked at me sheepishly. “Please, let me try one more time.” “What do you think I am? Crazy!” “Please, I’ll owe you.” “Just once,” I said. I gave him my right index finger, which so far hadn’t been used. He pierced me with the lancet, but the flow was again inadequate to perform the test. I grabbed the equipment from him, jabbed the middle finger of my right hand with the lancet, pipetted the blood into the tube, and deposited it into the diluting solution. Picking up the color chart, I compared it with the color of the solution, and announced my hemoglobin was 13.2. I glowered at my brother and rushed out of the bedroom, abused middle finger extended. Hesitating at the door, I turned my head toward him in disgust. “Maybe, I’m the one that should have been accepted to medical school, and become a doctor.” I slammed the door with all my might.