Blogfinger

East Side, West Side, all around the town.

By Paul Goldfinger, MD  (Reposted from Blogfinger.net, 2011)

We recently posted a photograph of Central Park after the 1969 Blizzard.  I took that photo from the top of The Mt. Sinai Hospital where I was a resident physician in internal medicine.  An Ocean Grover emailed to say that he was born there in the spring of 1969.  That took me back to something that happened there around that time:

Mt. Sinai Hospital is a large medical center  on the Upper East Side; one entrance faces Fifth Avenue while the other is on Madison Avenue.  Back then, the hospital consisted of a group of buildings that were connected by tunnels underground. One morning, at about 3 a.m., when I was on call in the ER, I received a page to come quickly  to the Klingenstein Clinical Center on Madison Ave.  The fastest route was to go outside and walk a half block to the KCC.  I was dressed in my house staff uniform: all white with a stethoscope and loose papers sticking out the jacket pocket.

As I stepped outside, a yellow cab screeched to a halt at the curb.  The driver jumped out, looked at me and said, “Are you a doctor?”  Lots of things pop into one’s mind at times such as that.  I thought, “No–I’m Batman” and then, “Why is this cabbie asking for my credentials?”

Anyhow, I said, “Yes. What’s the problem?”

“A lady is having a baby in the back seat!” he exclaimed.

“Sorry, I gotta go” is what first came to mind, but I opened the door to the cab, and there they were: Mom flat on her back, and the baby’s head crowning.  “Hello, I must be going” is what I next thought (to borrow a line from Groucho).  “But I can’t go; I have to stay.”

I had delivered 30 babies in medical school (but who’s counting?  I kept score in my ob. text).  However, I did not go to Mt. Sinai to deliver babies. Oh well— I reassured the mom and then caught the baby: PLOP!!!  It was as easy as that. Blood all over. A gooey crying baby in my arms.

Just then the intern from the ER stuck his head in the door. “Can I help?” he asked.

“Here” I said, handing him the baby….”I gotta go.”

Editor’s note:  If you want to read more about Paul’s adventures as a resident physician  in New York, go to this link:

https://blogfinger.net/?s=losing+sleep+in+the

(reprinted from the Ocean Grove Record, 2004)

LESLIE ODOM, JR.  From the Broadway show Hamilton.