Resident class of 1972
I came to the University of Michigan Hospital as an anesthesia resident in 1970 after eighteen years practising General Surgery. I expected to be the oldest resident around but the rumor, via Jordan Waldman (San Diego, CA), was that the late Keith Lieding was already receiving Social Security checks. Keith was not, of course, but he enjoyed a good joke even if it was on him. Keith had a new joke for us every day.
Now, Thomas Corbett (Sylvannia, PA) never joked but some of us thought it was funny to see him running around in the hospital every day carrying two or three air filled balloons. The residents’ rumor was that Tom had inhaled too much Halothane and that Dr. Sweet was giving him time away from the head of the table to allow his anesthetic blood levels to go down a bit. These balloons were filled with air from the operating rooms for analysis of their levels of waste anesthetic gases. We did not know that this was the start of something big. Tom told us that it was, but we thought he was just full of Halothane! His subsequent work on the effects of waste anesthetic gases in the operating rooms on female personnel has had an impact on the nation. Waste anesthetic gas monitoring is now required wherever anesthetic gases are used.
Then there was Fatolla Lessane (Livonia, MI) whom I called “The Great Lessani” and Gholam -Amini (Grand Blanc, Ml) straight from the old world of Iran. (They called it Persia then.) Amini had left his VW Beetle on the Quadrangle on campus one night and when he returned the next morning, the car was sitting on cement blocks with all four wheels gone. A very serious Amini could not understand “Why in this land of plenty would someone steal my wheels”? Lessani consoling his countryman told him not to worry, that the thieves would probably not get much for the wheels! I agreed with both of them.
Dr. Anne E.G. Bruce (Now Anne Hill; Ann Arbor, Ml) was in her fellowship at the University Hospital and gave us the Irish (don’t say British) perspective on Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. She also had the task of explaining to us why the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland is so bitter. I think we grasped the Anesthesiology more easily than we did the Northern Ireland conflict, but we enjoyed hearing Anne explain. I suspect she is still explaining!
We had the nicest and the prettiest Den Mother of all the residents at the University. We had Mrs. Louise Luther (San Antonio, TX), Dr. Sweet’s secretary. She took care of us like a mother; our pay checks, where to park, how to get football tickets, vacation time and advised us on a variety of problems encountered by persons new to the area.
I returned to my hometown, Battle Creek, Ml to work at the head of the table with my surgical colleagues whom I had previously worked with from across the table. It was as if I had never left, except that at the end of the case they had to go to the office, I did not. Surgeons hate to have to go to the office. They love it in the operating room. People still ask me which I liked better, Surgery or Anesthesia? It is a difficult question but the answer is I preferred Anesthesiology during the second half of my career in that it gave me more free time, and I did not have to go to the office. I preferred surgery the first half of my working years, when calls from the Emergency Room in the middle of the night with ambulances and flashing lights were exciting and even had a certain glamour to it. But that wears off and the older surgeon starts thinking of ways to avoid Emergency Rooms and going to the office.
I retired from Anesthesia in August 1986 due to the lack of availability of adequate liability Insurance coverage in Michigan ($200,000/ $600,000). Six months later I went back to work in Geriatric Medicine at the Battle Creek VA Medical Center. On a good day I take care of only 100 elderly males with every disability and ailment known to man. On bad days (covering for a doctor who is off duty) I take care of 200 such patients. Not long ago I told Dr. DeKornfeld about this. I said, “They are working me harder at the VA than you worked me at the U.” As you might guess he said, “That's good for you; It will help keep you young.”
I thoroughly enjoyed my association with the U of M Anesthesiology Department and continue to do so.
Originally published March, 1988