#servingpatients

About the Author: I would like to introduce this unique and special surgeon to you. I met Dr. Connolly when my three-year-old son, Rickey, was referred to him for a painful lump on his thigh that turned out to be rhabdomyosarcoma. Neville had just become a citizen of the US and was just starting his private practice in Washington, D.C. as a general and pediatric surgeon. Neville operated and removed the tumor which gave Rickey relief from his pain. He explained the diagnosis to me and said he would be happy to care for him as I asked him to do. Rickey trusted and adored him. He felt that Neville could fix whatever went wrong, which he did for the year he was sick. Neville tried everything that was available to cure him and Rickey did very well for the first six months. Rickey’s father was a hopeless drunk, years before Rickey got sick, and was never there for him. Neville provided Rickey with the security of a father figure that he lacked from his own father. I had Rickey baptized at home by a Priest from St. Alban’s Episcopal Church and Neville became his God Father. Neville had two little girls and Rickey said he was the only little boy Dr. Connolly had. When the cancer metastasized and I could no longer take Rickey to Dr. Connolly’s office, he came from Washington, D.C. to our house in the Virginia suburbs to care for him. Since he had just started his practice, he was not too busy to work it into his schedule. He brought Rickey children’s bible story books about Jesus and the lamb and other stories that Rickey treasured. When Neville went on Vacation with his family he would send Rickey post cards to encourage him. When ever anything bothered Rickey, he would say call Dr. Connolly, he will fix it, and he did. He was available for Rickey any time, any day. When Rickey didn’t feel well, he would pat my arm and say, don’t worry mommy, God is looking out after me. He also told me that if you have faith even as small as a grain of mustard seed, you can do anything. I don’t know how he knew all the things he did at three years old, but he said them with authority. He loved classical music that he was introduced to, by the record of music and the story of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. I asked him how he liked the story.  I liked it a lot, he said, but you know I felt sorry for Maleficent, the evil fairy, maybe she wouldn’t have been so bad if they had only invited her to the party. There was something very special about Rickey. I always thought I felt that way because he was my son, but everyone who knew him thought he was very special too. Neville said he tried not to get too close to his patients, because it hurt so bad if they died, but he couldn’t help himself with Rickey. The night Rickey died, Neville came to the house to take care of arrangements. The first thing he did, after he comforted me, was to go into the bedroom and get down on his knees at Rickey’s bed and asked God to forgive him for his inadequacies and prayed for Rickey. I was overwhelmed by emotion in realizing the depth of character of this humble and pious healer. His abilities in healing and caring were extradentary. His faith in God and his response to God’s calling was without bounds. Now I know why Neville and Rickey were so drawn to one another, they are kindred spirits. Rickey’s funeral was held at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. and Neville was one of the pall bearers. Neville and I remained friends and he became my doctor for life. After Rickey died my marriage ended in divorce. My ex-husband remarried and later died of alcoholism. I started a new life and got a job at Georgetown Hospital. and moved to Washington D.C.   I became friends with Agnes, Neville’s wife, and we all served together on committees of our Church at St. Alban’s. Many years later, as Agnes started to fail, I was able to help Neville care for her. About thirty-five years after I first met Neville, Agnes died. Neville and I were both getting close to retirement. Neville told me he realized that he was in love with me and asked me to marry him.  I realized that like Rickey, Neville and I were kindred spirits and I was in love with him. We have been married for twenty-three wonderful years. Though there have been many changes in the delivery of  medicine during his practice, Neville will always believe it to be a “calling”. Read the full article

I was asked, one day, to see a patient with acute abdominal pain. A simple physical examination convinced me that he had acute appendicitis and I recommended immediate surgery. He refused and went home. I was very worried and could not get him out of my mind. That evening, though it was pouring with rain, I drove out to his house to see him again. I found that he was no better, perhaps a little worse. This time he acceded to my demands that he be operated on. I put him in my car and drove him to the hospital where I removed an appendix which was about to rupture. He and his wife were very grateful and I got to know him quite well while he was recovering. I found out that he worked for a radio company and was an expert on such things as amplifiers and radio receivers. By this time, we had moved into our house in Washington and I had set up my ‘Hi-fi’ system. I had this made for me by a friend in England before transistors had replaced vacuum tubes. Also, it used 240-volts rather than the 120-volt current used in American houses. Someone had told me that houses in America had two incoming electric lines and an earth line. If one connected the input of the two incoming power lines, one got 240-volts. I had done this, connecting the input of my machine with one terminal to each of the incoming lines in the main box. It had worked quite satisfactorily for some time but now it had died. I was at a loss to find someone who could repair it. I asked my recovering patient if he would be able to help me out, since he was an expert in that field. Perhaps out of a sense of gratitude, he agreed to come to my house to see what he could do. When he arrived and saw how I had managed to get an input of 240-volts into the machine I thought that he would have a heart attack. After rapidly disconnecting my brilliant solution, he explained that I needed a transformer to adapt my machine to work on 120-volts and that he could get one for me. I had never really understood much about electricity and always felt lucky that I had learned, rather parrot-wise, enough physics to get into medical school. I am still not quite sure why electricity does not run all over the floor when you pull a plug out of a wall socket. I accept the fact that it does not do so as a merciful act of God. Apparently, God was on my side when I did the original wiring as there was no explosion and the house did not burn down. My patient kindly sorted out the whole mess and got my Hi-fi working again. Other than the cost of the transformer he would not charge me. He said that my unexpected zeal in coming to his house that night had saved his life and he felt this small service scarcely repaid me. I wonder if he realized just how significant a service he had rendered to me.   I became involved in a situation which was very revealing and, to me, rather unhappy.  One of the senior pediatricians asked me to see a small child with intractable constipation. I examined the child, found that I needed to evacuate the impacted stool from high in the intestine and did so with the aid of an anesthetic. My examination convinced me that the child had Hirschsprung’s disease. This is a condition where the nerves in the lowest part of the intestine have not developed properly. As a result, the contents of the intestine are propelled only so far. They cannot be pushed through the area which has the deficient nerve supply. Though the condition had been known for many years, its true cause was only discovered in the late 1940's by the group at Boston Children’s hospital. At Great Ormond Street in London we had learned about their work and copied them. The cure was to remove the malfunctioning part of the distal bowel and connect the remainder to the anal canal. This is a somewhat tricky operation but pediatric surgeons were performing it with great success. Having seen this particular child, I wrote a note on the chart suggesting the diagnosis and recommending an X-ray which would confirm my opinion. I also called the referring physician. Most apologetically he informed me that he had only seen the child because the child’s own pediatrician was out of town. This pediatrician had returned and did not wish me to see the patient any more. He had his own surgeon. This surgeon did not believe in Hirschsprung’s disease. He had the child transferred to another hospital where he performed several misguided operations without improving the situation. I was very frustrated but did not see what I could do. A couple of years later a baby was admitted to the ‘staff’ service and was seen by Dr. Hawfield. He called me and said that he had a baby that he would like me to see with him. I went to the ward with him. Before he could tell me anything about the problem I noticed the name of the baby. It was the same last name as the child mentioned above. I said; “Are you suspecting Hirschsprung’s?” He said he was but how did I know. I told him the sad story of the other child who turned out to be the older sister of the current patient. It turned out that the older sister was still in trouble. The parents had spent all their money on the medical expenses of the older child and had to send the second child to the hospital for free care. We confirmed the diagnosis on the baby and Harold asked me to operate as he was not familiar with the procedure. I made the necessary plans and arranged for one of the anesthesiologists with whom I had developed a very satisfactory relationship to give the anesthetic. The night before the operation I went to the hospital to check that everything I would need would be ready. There I met the Chief of Anesthesia. He said to me; “Why are you going to kill that baby tomorrow?” I spent a miserable night appreciating how much depended on the next day. Besides the life of the baby, my whole reputation hung in the balance. I went ahead and performed the operation as I had done before under the tutelage of Denis Browne. Actually, the baby was only 3 months old and the standard recommendation was to wait until the baby was at least 6 months of age. The procedure went very smoothly and the baby had a normal bowel movement on the way to the recovery room. She never looked back and was discharged within a week. This is not the end of the story. The parents, who were very grateful to me, were working for an embassy in Washington at that time. They were subsequently transferred to New York. A couple of years later they called me up from New York to tell me that their older daughter was still suffering from her original problem. Since their younger daughter was now completely healthy, they asked if they could bring the older one down for me to cure. I told them that should not be necessary because there were excellent pediatric surgeons in New York. I would contact the one I knew on their behalf. I rang up Dr. Santulli and explained the situation to him. He agreed to take on the child which he did. He found that she was nearly moribund but he revived her and then cured her. I went over the hospital records of this child when I had first seen her. To my amazement and utter disgust, I found that my notes, consultation and recommendations had been removed in total. This made clear to me the difficulty I would have in establishing a purely pediatric surgical practice in Washington at that time. Perhaps I could sow the seed for others to follow. This was my thinking at that time but, with hindsight I realize that I might have done much more if I had pursued the issue of the original ignorant mistreatment of the older daughter or I had brought up the deletions to her chart when I discovered them. I was too acutely conscious of my foreign back ground and surgical training to face the repercussions that almost certainly would have ensued. Maybe if I had done so at that time the upgrading of the surgical care of children in Washington would not have had to await the arrival of Judson Randolph as the full time surgical chief. Read the full article