Through a Surgeon's Eyes

By Norman Rubaum M.D. F.A.C.S

The story is an autobiographical one of Dr. Rubaum's struggles to become a physician and surgeon. It outlines his career as a practicing general surgeon and is filled with anecdotes about interesting and diffiicult cases he encountered in his medical and surgical life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543928563

Book preview

life.

This is not a story of rags to riches. In my life, I did not know a hungry day or a night without shelter. Not so with my parents, who were immigrants from Poland. My father, Morris, came to the United States when he was seven years old. His family was very poor and the whole family worked together to make ends meet. My grandfather was a bread baker who immigrated by himself, not knowing a word of English, and found a job at Levy ’ s Bakery in Brooklyn, where he worked until he saved enough money to send for the rest of his family. My father was in the second wave, and came here with his mother and sister Rose.

The fare for the trip across the Atlantic was $25 per person in steerage. If one failed the medical examination at Ellis Island and was denied entrance, the fare also included the return trip to the country of origin. On arrival, nine-year-old Rose stuck her head in the wrought iron fence surrounding the island, and could not get it out. Ultimately, the fire department was called, and they were able to release her with no damage to either Rose or the fence. The family was terrified, certain they would be sent back for causing so much trouble. Fortunately that did not happen and their lives in the United States began.

My mother, May, was not so fortunate. She had nine brothers and sisters, with a tyrant for a father. They lived in a small village in Poland and were desperately poor. My mother slept on straw and was constantly hungry. One story she related from those years has never left me. She spent her days searching the fields for a potato to eat, but often, if she found one, her father would take it from her and eat it himself. He said to her, You’re a child; go to sleep, and when you wake up, you won’t remember whether you ate the potato or not. Life in the ghettos of Poland was harsh.

Her family members also came to this country one or two at a time, like so many before them, with each new arrival saving money to help bring over the next. After her family had departed one by one, she was left with a rabbi in Berlin when she was 12, never really knowing if they would be reunited. But eventually she was sent for, and arrived in America when she was about 16. Those years of desperation, loneliness, and poverty left their mark on her, and she always had the lurking feeling that all of the good things she had accomplished and acquired here could be taken away in an instant, as they had been for the Jewish people throughout history.

Between 1880 and 1920, millions of immigrants arrived in America from all over the world. My parents and their families arrived in that wave, not speaking a word of English, having no education and no particular skills for earning a living. It was a difficult time, filled with anxiety and worry. But the one thing they did have in abundance was hope. They truly felt that, with hard work, they could achieve the American Dream. Freedom from the stress of persecution that they had endured in Europe made their struggles in their new country all seem worthwhile.

One of the proudest moments of my mother’s life was when she took her examination for naturalization and became a citizen of the United States. She had taken night classes and studied a great deal of American history, learning many things that I had not yet learned in school. Her naturalization certificate was framed and proudly displayed in our home.

Though my mother had no formal education as a youngster, she was fluent in Polish, German, Russian, and Yiddish. Her English was impeccable and she spoke without the slightest trace of a European accent. She attended night school and was a champion speller. She was also an amazing cook, making her own noodles from scratch without a recipe.

Although working from the time he was a child, my father did go to public school in New York and, ultimately, to college. That was no small feat in his era. He graduated from the Savage School for Physical Education and became a physical education teacher and an athletic coach. He had wanted to become a doctor, but there was not enough money in the family for his education, and his contribution to the survival of the family took precedence. He was extremely intelligent, with an incredible memory, and was a very gifted athlete.

At that time, my grandparents owned a small bakery on Staten Island and were struggling. At the height of the Depression, they feared losing the bakery. My father was already teaching, but his parents asked him to take off his tie and come work to help save the bakery. Without hesitation, he began driving the bakery truck to build up the business. His sister Rose was working in Brooklyn—ten hours a day, six days a week—and made two dollars as her weekly wage. It went into the family pot, of which my grandmother was in charge, and they eked out a survival-level existence.

Higher education was recognized by my family as the way out of their former ghetto existence. Because funds were scarce, one person was selected to pursue this path. My father’s brother Sam, 14 years younger than my father, was picked to forge ahead. Though it imposed a burden on the rest of the family, Sam did succeed in fulfilling the family dream. He became a physician, and was the shining star of success in our family.

My parents had married in 1926. My sister, Edith, was born in 1928, a year before the stock market crashed, and I was born in 1930. I’m not sure of the sequence of events, but I have always felt that Edith was more responsible than I for the Depression that followed.

From Brooklyn, we moved to Staten Island, where we lived in a small apartment over my grandparents’ bakery on Jersey Street. My mother, father, grandmother, aunts, and uncles all worked in the bakery. Eventually the bakery was sold, and the family moved to California. My sister and I had both been very sick in Brooklyn and Staten Island; it was hoped that the California weather would improve our health. But my father was very cautious in making a move. His brothers and sisters, parents, and other relatives had already moved there before we ventured west to California.

My father had a 1936 Dodge automobile which he drove from New York to Los Angeles six times before he made the final decision to move there permanently. He made the drive by himself twice, and with my mother, sister, and me on four other occasions. His goal was to make 500 miles a day, and in that way he crossed the country in five days. My sister and I were small, but I still have very fond memories of those trips. My mother didn’t drive, so our days were spent with my father at the wheel and my mother in the back seat making sandwiches for us all. He took the Northern route, the Southern route, and the Central route across the United States for variety. We went through many national parks and wonderful cities, most at 60 miles an hour. We drove through Yellowstone and I was excited to see Old Faithful. The sign said that the next eruption would be in 30 minutes, but Dad said that we did not have 30 minutes to wait. I remember seeing the start of the eruption through the back window of the car as we were leaving the park.

I did see Mt. Rushmore, the Badlands of South Dakota, Yosemite, Washington, D.C., and other memorable places on those trips. My father was a great raconteur and kept us entertained with endless songs, poems, and stories, so the days of driving passed with little to no boredom. We all took part in singing rounds and we all learned a lot of my Dad’s repertoire. The exercise of begging him to sing a certain song, which he would at first refuse to sing, would burn up another hundred miles.

We arrived in Los Angeles when I was eight. We lived in some small apartments before my parents bought a modest house in East Los Angeles, where I shared a bedroom with my sister.

My father and his brother Ira bought a gas station about eight miles from our home. The gas station was a huge part of my education. I would take two streetcars and one bus to get there, and made that trip on Fridays after school and on Saturdays from the time I was nine years old. The station was open 24 hours a day and my father frequently worked until midnight. Over the next many years I became proficient in pumping gas, changing oil, and fixing flat tires. My pay was a stop on the way home at midnight, where I bought two dipped beef sandwiches and wolfed them down while my father drove me home. The sandwiches, which now cost nine dollars each, were ten cents at that time. My father would give me a quarter, which bought two sandwiches and supplied a five-cent tip. My summers were also spent at the gas station when school was out. A summer vacation was never in our plans. Hard work was to be the key to our survival. We were relatively poor, but so were our friends and family, so we didn’t realize this as children. There was always enough money for food and necessities, but we were taught not to ask for much.

One of the defining events of my childhood was the advent of World War II. It began in December of 1941 when I was 11 years old. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack. I remember December 7, 1941, as clearly as if it were yesterday. On a Sunday morning, I was polishing my shoes by the back door of our house when my uncle emerged to tell me of the Japanese attack. None of us knew where Pearl Harbor was, but we all knew that what had happened was bad.

In spite of world events, we were not prepared for war. After the losses of World War I and the Great Depression, the country was in an isolationist mood. Hitler had already conquered Western Europe and was on the shores of the English Channel, preparing to invade that country. He had begun an invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, with great initial success. Now the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had destroyed our Pacific fleet. The news was very grim and we clung to the radio all day and into the night. Rumors were rampant; a possible invasion of Hawaii—and of California—was on everyone’s mind.

As children, we absorbed the worries of our parents. The country began to mobilize and my uncles and cousins headed off to war. Gasoline was rationed, along with meat, butter, and other things. Tires and batteries were almost impossible to buy, and they became rationed as well. At school we had drives for scrap metal and old tires. We children had savings books in which to put our dimes and quarters until we had saved up enough to buy a War Bond. Bond drives were in full force around the nation, raising money to support the war effort. Air raid wardens were assigned to our neighborhood, and civilian defense organizations began training. USOs sprang up to keep up the troops’ morale; our movie stars made great efforts to support these and other organizations. The spirit of the country was one of fear mixed with great hope.

Japan did not invade Hawaii or the West Coast; they were too busy conquering the island fortresses of the Pacific. The names of Wake Island, the Philippines, New Georgia, the Solomon Islands, New Guinea, and others made their way into our lexicon. In those invasions, our meager defenses were easily overrun.

But the United States is a large country with great industrial might, and within a couple of years we were producing airplanes, tanks, and ships at a fantastic rate. The production of automobiles stopped at the end of 1941 as all of our resources were converted to war production. England was hanging on by a thread, but American shipping convoys of war material were keeping them in the war while we geared up.

On June 6, 1944—a harrowing two-and-a-half years into the war—the Allies invaded Normandy in France to begin the liberation of Europe. The Allied forces stormed the beaches, and after President Roosevelt’s speech informed us of the invasion, our home radios went silent of news for two days. Those two days were very anxious ones for everyone; almost every family had loved ones in the service and the news blackout was palpable.

And then—elation and joy as news of the successful landings came through! Allied troops were in France and Hitler was on the run. The war still had a long way to go, but at least the end was now in sight.

I was 15 when the war ended in 1945. Two of my cousins had been killed in combat, and an uncle had received a Purple Heart. The losses were very hard on our families. One of our relatives moved into our little house for the latter part of the war because her husband had been shipped to the Pacific and she wanted to wait for him in California. She slept on a rollaway cot that we took out each evening for her. She was a lovely person and her presence was not an imposition. Her husband returned at the end of the war, unharmed.

During the war I had followed my sister, who was two years ahead of me, into junior high school in a Mexican neighborhood. The school’s population mix was 95 percent Mexican and 5 percent Jewish. I was in the latter group, which made for a difficult three years. The Mexican gangs took their anxieties and frustrations out on the Jewish kids. I got beaten up frequently and was knocked unconscious twice; at neither time did I see the punch coming. I told my father about my problems, but he refused to take me out of the school and put me into a better and safer atmosphere. Stay there; it will make a man out of you, he insisted. Those were tough years for all the Jewish kids in the school. Hitler’s treatment of the Jews in Europe was already well known in our country, and during one of my beatings, a Mexican tough said to me, Go back to Palestine! I didn’t know where Palestine was, but it didn’t sound like a bad idea at the time.

The last day of school was particularly hard, as the Mexicans went around giving the Jewish boys going-away presents. I hid most of the day to avoid a last beating and didn’t even leave school at the last bell; I waited in a classroom until I figured that all the kids were gone. Then I went to clean out my locker. The corridor was silent as I dialed my combination. I was almost done putting my stuff away when I glanced down the hall and my heart almost stopped. There were two of the most vicious thugs in the school, advancing toward me in the empty hallway with mayhem on their minds and blood in their eyes. I knew I was going to get it! In desperation, I grabbed my yearbook and called out to them, Boy, am I glad to see you! I was looking for you earlier. Would you please sign my yearbook for me? They were flabbergasted. With great reluctance, they took my pen and carefully wrote their names in the book. I thanked them profusely and they, still somewhat stunned, went on their way. I left the school unharmed.

When I recall my experiences in junior high, I don’t think that the Mexican kids were really anti-Semitic; any ethnic minority in that school would have been on the receiving end of their bullying.

Not so with Miss O’Hara, my U.S. history teacher. An unmarried, redheaded Irish woman in her 40s, she was a bitter soul. She hated the Jews and made no bones about it. She constantly referred to the kikes on Brooklyn Avenue, a popular street for shopping in the middle of a very Jewish neighborhood. The kids in the class, nearly all of whom were Jewish, were cowed by Miss O’Hara. After all, she was the teacher and represented authority to us.

I listened to her anti-Jewish tirades for quite a while and finally said, Miss O’Hara, if you use the word ‘kike’ again, I will tell my father and he will come down here! Her face reddened and she looked as if she might hit me. But she regained her composure, glared at me, and said, You are banished from this class! Go out in the hall and stand by the door. I will give you an ‘F’ in the roll book for every day that you are out there!

I stood out in the hall for a couple weeks, bored and twiddling my thumbs. One day, there was a fire drill. The class emptied out and went down the stairs to our assigned area. The last to leave was Miss O’Hara. As she exited, I called after her, What do you want me to do? She turned and glared at me and replied, Stand there and burn! And so I stood there. One of the male teachers had the duty of walking the halls to make sure the building was empty. He saw me standing there and ordered me out of the building. I went out into the yard; though Miss O’Hara saw me, she said nothing.

I was a minor hero in the class among the Jewish kids. Miss O’Hara never used the word kike again, but I’m sure her prejudice against the Jews never changed. Ultimately she relented and allowed me back into the class. But she made me sit at a separate table in the front of the room. At least I didn’t have to wear a dunce cap.

Then on to high school, where my problems were greatly ameliorated. The population mix changed and the physical abuses were gone. Alas, the education there was not geared toward advancement to college; it was more like a trade school. Only about ten students in my large high school class continued on to college. I was selected valedictorian of my class, and I still remember the title of my speech: Knowledge is the Key to the Future.

There had been little choice of colleges for me. Money was always a significant issue, and the University of California at Los Angeles was a state school that charged no tuition for state residents. There was an incidental fee of $42 each semester, but my parents could afford that. I lived at home and drove the 60-mile round trip to and from school each day. My study desk was a bridge table with a goose-neck lamp, set up in our living room.

At least I had a car. Two of my friends from high school were also going to UCLA and lived about five miles from my house. I drove them to school and back each day at 25 cents a ride. That paid for my gasoline.

The college life portrayed in the movies, with fraternity parties and dances, was merely a fantasy for my friends and me. My father, who knew that I wished to become a physician, took me aside when I graduated from high school and impressed upon me that grades were going to be the most important thing if I wanted to pursue a career in medicine. He said that I should consider myself in jail for the next four years and do nothing but study. As I lived at home, my father’s word was law. I studied every day—including Sundays, when the family usually went on outings without me.

In my second year of pre-med at UCLA, I took a basic psychology course. In the class was the most beautiful girl at UCLA. I finagled a seat next to her, and we became friendly. At exam time, I told her that I had a couple of old examinations, and asked if she would like to study together. She accepted, and thus began my romance with Selma, who would eventually become my wife. Money was always tight, so our dating consisted primarily of going to the movies, the park, and the museums.

Although I studied long hours, I was overwhelmed by the difficulty of my classes in the pre-med program. I entered UCLA at a decided disadvantage, compared to the students who had attended more academically oriented high schools. My college classmates had learned how to study and how to prepare for examinations; my high school did not provide that kind of education. My grades were all C’s at the end of my first year of college. Mathematically, it would become almost impossible, in my remaining three years, to pull that grade point average up to the high levels necessary to compete with my outstanding classmates. I graduated with mediocre grades and a degree in zoology.

I applied to many medical schools, but was accepted by none. This was not surprising, considering what I was up against. Many of my classmates were World War II veterans who attended UCLA on the GI Bill at the end of the war. These dedicated students were older and more mature than the rest of us, and very hard to compete with. In addition, because of their wartime service, they received special consideration for the limited places in medical school. My prospects for becoming a doctor looked bleak. I