The Doctor's Blessing. Patricia Davids
serious infections. A young mill worker with a gash on his arm and a high fever had to be sent to the hospital in Millersburg for IV antibiotics.
After that, he saw a young Amish woman who’d come to see Amber for her prenatal visits. After he explained the current situation, his patient got up and left his exam room without a word. In the waiting room, she spoke to a second expectant mother. The two left together. Amber followed them outside and talked with them briefly.
Was she smoothing things over or throwing gasoline on the fire?
His next patient was a three-year-old Amish girl with a severe cough. The shy toddler was also a dwarf, and she wanted nothing to do with him. She kept pushing his stethoscope away each time he tried to listen to her chest.
Mrs. Lapp, her worried mother, apologized. Amber moved forward to help restrain the child. “Doctor, Helen doesn’t speak English yet. She won’t learn it until she goes to school. The Amish speak Pennsylvania Deitsh at home, a German dialect.”
Glancing up at her, he said, “I thought it was Dutch.”
“It’s commonly called Pennsylvania Dutch but that’s an Americanization of the term Deitsh,” Amber replied.
He said, “Don’t hold her down, it will only frighten her. What we need is a little help from Doctor Dog.”
Reaching into a drawer on the exam table, he withdrew a hand puppet, a fuzzy brown dog with floppy ears, a white lab coat and a miniature stethoscope around his neck. Looking down at the toy, Phillip said, “Dr. Dog, I’d like you to meet Helen Lapp.”
“Hello, Helen,” the puppet chirped in a falsetto voice as he waved one stubby arm.
Phillip heard Amber giggle behind him. Helen sat up with a hesitant smile on her face.
The puppet scratched his head with his paw. “What’s wrong with you, Helen? Are you sick?”
Helen’s mother translated for her. The girl nodded, never taking her eyes off the toy.
Swinging the puppet around to face himself, Phillip asked in his puppet voice, “Aren’t you going to make her better, Dr. White?”
“I’m trying but Helen is afraid of me.”
“She is?” Turning to face the little girl, Dr. Dog asked, “Are you afraid of Dr. White?”
Her mother asked her the question in Pennsylvania Dutch. Helen glared at Phillip and nodded.
Dr. Dog rubbed his nose. “But you aren’t scared of me, are you?”
When her mother stopped speaking, Helen shook her head. Reaching out tentatively, she patted the dog’s head then giggled. Her laughter quickly became a harsh cough.
Dr. Dog asked, “Can I listen to your chest?”
Helen leaned back against her mother but didn’t object. Using Dr. Dog to grasp his stethoscope, Phillip listened to the child. When he was done with the exam, Dr. Dog thanked Helen, shook hands with her and her mother, then returned to his drawer. Helen continued to watch the drawer as if he might pop out again.
As Phillip wrote out a prescription for Helen, Amber leaned close. “Very clever.”
More pleased than he should have been by that simple compliment, he continued with his work. Helen had him deeply concerned.
Turning to her mother, he handed her the prescription and said, “I hear a loud murmur in Helen’s heart, a noise that shouldn’t be there. I’d like for her to see a specialist.”
The woman stared at the note in her hand. “Will this medicine make her better?”
“I believe so, but she needs to see a heart doctor. I’ll have Amber make an appointment. I believe Helen’s heart condition is making her cough worse.”
The mother nodded. Relieved, he looked to Amber. She said, “I’ll take care of it.”
He saw several more townspeople after that with assorted coughs and colds. Then two young Amish brothers came in with poison ivy from head to toe. Their mother explained her usual home remedy had failed to help.
He asked for her recipe and jotted it down. He then ordered a steroid shot for each of the boys. Afterward, he gave their mother a prescription for an ointment to be used twice a day, but encouraged her to continue her own treatment as well.
When they left, Amber remained in the room.
“Yes?” He kept writing on the chart without looking up.
“Why didn’t you have her discontinue her home remedy? It clearly isn’t working.”
“There was nothing in it that would interfere with the medication I prescribed. It should even give the boys some added relief. Mostly, it will make her feel better to be doing something for them.” He snapped the chart shut. “What’s next?”
His final patient of the day turned out to be an Amish woman with a badly swollen wrist.
Amber stood by the counter as Phillip pulled his chair up beside the young Mrs. Nissley. Her first name was Martha. She held her arm cradled across her stomach.
Phillip said, “May I see your wrist, please?”
Taking it gently, he palpated it, feeling for any obvious breaks. “Tell me what happened.”
“The dog scared my Milch cow, and she kicked. She missed the dog but hit me.”
He winced. “Sounds painful.”
“Ja. That it is.”
He admired her stoicism. “You’re the first cow-kick victim I’ve treated in my career. In spite of that, the only way to be certain it isn’t broken is to get an X-ray. Are you related to Edna Nissley?”
“Which Edna Nissley?”
He struggled to find a description since they dressed alike and seemed so similar. “She’s an older lady. Short, kind of stout. Oh, she drives a gray horse.”
“That is my husband’s uncle’s wife. The other Edna Nissley is the wife of my husband’s cousin William. Little Edna Nissley is the daughter of my husband’s youngest brother, Daniel.”
“Okay.” A confusing family history if he’d ever heard one. He glanced at Amber. “I’ll need AP and Lateral X-rays of the left wrist. Mrs. Nissley, is there any chance you may be pregnant?”
“Nee. At least, I don’t think so.”
He looked at Amber. “Make sure she wears a lead apron just in case.”
“Of course.”
Ten minutes later he had the films in hand. Putting them up on the light box, he indicated the wrist bones for his patient to see.
“I don’t detect a break. What you have is a bad sprain and some nasty bruising. I’ll wrap it with an elastic bandage to compress the swelling. Rest it and ice it. I want you to keep the arm elevated. Is there a problem with doing any of those things?”
“Can I milk the cow?”
He tried not to smile. “If you can do it with one hand or with your toes.”
She grinned. “I have children and a helpful husband.”
“Good. Here’s a prescription for some pain medication if you need it. See me again if it isn’t better by the end of the week.”
When Mrs. Nissley left he saw the waiting room was finally empty. A glance at his watch told him it was nearly four in the afternoon. More tired than he cared to admit, Phillip retreated to his grandfather’s office and sank gratefully into Harold’s padded, brown leather chair. If his seventy-five-year-old grandfather kept this kind of pace, he was hardier than Phillip gave him credit for.
After only five minutes of downtime, a knock sounded at his door. Sighing, he called out, “Yes?”