My mother was the only parent home. My father was working 2nd shift at the paper mill. I was bleeding quite a lot and stanching the flow of blood with a rag or towel. My mother made a quick decision (even though she'd called my father at work). She decided she would try a few doctors in town and only take me to the ER as a last resort. Mom didn't want me to wait a long time at the ER for one thing, but she also wanted to shield me from whatever horrible sights a 7-year-old might see in an ER on a Friday night. To begin the quest for a doctor who would stitch up my chin, my mother enlisted the aid of a neighbor whose husband was also working 2nd shift at the local defense plant. It was about 7:00 PM.
Think of it: Three or four of the general practice physicians (family doctors) we were about to call on with an "emergency" a "seriously injured little boy" were all at home, which also happened to be their offices. This was before the days of group practice, or professional care groups who resided in glass medical office buildings, who have limited visiting hours and use pagers (probably cellphones by now) and answering services off hours. Family doctors back then lived in and were active members of the community --- you said Hi to them in the grocery store; one of them sang in the choir where I attended church; their kids were classmates. My father had a fishing boat, and years later I'd even gone deep sea fishing with our family doctor....
.... who wasn't available that evening.... I think we'd called and no one had answered but my mother just wanted to make sure Doc wasn't home.....
.... as it turned out, the second doctor we tried was home, but he turned off all the lights as we approached. Naturally, the office lights were already turned off, but he even shut off some lights in his dining room and other rooms. After a barrage of doorbell ringing and knocking, the doctor finally opened an upstairs window and stuck his head out. He said he couldn't help us, but made a reference to another doctor who maybe could help, and also the hospital emergency room. My mother and the neighbor were furious. They gossiped that this particular doctor was known to have a problem with the bottle. That must be the reason why he wouldn't treat me. Meanwhile I lay bleeding in the backseat, wondering when the ordeal would be over.
The third doctor wasn't answering either. Yes, it did seem a little bit demanding and unrealistic to expect help, even 50 years ago when we were supposedly more inclined to altruism than we are today. However, I remember our family doctor making house calls for fevers and measles and pink eye and other childhood maladies.
So en-route to the ER, we passed one more doctor's office who wasn't on the list. By now my mother and the neighbor (who had kids my age, friends) had squandered somewhere between a half hour to an hour driving around in a futile search for a healer, and this doctor, whom they hadn't heard of, reluctantly agreed to treat me. I imagine that the specter of a lawsuit and malpractice insurance haunted GPs even then, and was most likely the reason no one would see me after hours except in a hospital. This doctor took a small chance, I didn't have a major injury, so I don't think he was overly concerned about anything going wrong and he was good enough to look at me. He used steri-strips to close up the gash in my chin, and this made more sense --- sutures would have left a bigger scar, the cut was mostly on bone so it would likely heal without sutures.....
..... Unlike the scar on my stomach that has 16 stitches, which I've had since the age of 2, the result of surgically removing a ring I had accidentally swallowed and could not pass. Luckily, that surgery was done in a hospital.
