And these aren't your run of the mill illnesses either. We don't get colds like normal people. No, our ailments are far more complicated and usually undiagnosable by traditional medical personnel. These are the kind of ailments that defy diagnoses; that end with the doctor saying, "Well, we can't really find anything wrong with you, so we're not sure what's causing it."
Now, my father would tell you that having an illness that modern medical personnel are unable to diagnose would lead even a normal person to alternative medicine. And I have to agree with him. But personally, I have to look back and wonder at some of our doctor choices. I'm sure I've forgotten more than I've remembered, and I more than likely don't have all my facts straight. But this is how I remember them, in no particular order.
Sugar Pills
The Sugar Pill doctor was one of the stranger doctors I remember. We had equally wacky treatments, but this guy was strange to boot. I never quite bought his story. He may have been the last of the dying breed of snake oil salesmen from another time. Maybe it was a family business and he was just trying to make his father proud.
The office was somewhere in Philadelphia, or at least close to the city. It was old and fairly large. I think it was an old home, dark wood, large windows, the whole deal.
To start your session, he had you sit in front of this machine and grip two metal cylinders that were attached to wires. Ostensibly, these were hooked up to the machine and told him something of your condition. But I'm not sure of that. I don't remember asking him what it did, but even if I did, I'm sure I didn't understand his response.
Normally, I would do the metal handle thing, then I'd have to go wait in another room. Not to sound too spooky, but I really can't remember what happened in there. Our whole family would be there, each of us in a different room. Or at least some of us, so that several of us were being "treated" at once.
Once though, I almost began to believe that the doctor actually knew what he was doing. I was sitting there holding the metal handles, and he was watching the machine when he asked me a question. It was like he was reading my mind.
"Do you have to go to the bathroom?" he asked.
I was speechless. In fact, I DID have to go the bathroom. And it wasn't going to be quick. I was going to be awhile and would probably need a Highlights or a Ranger Rick or something. How did he know?
At the time, I credited the now amazing machine. But in reality, I was probably squirming around and passing gas. You probably didn't have to be a medical genius to realize the kid needed to use the facilities.
At the end of each visit, my mother was given a small brown glass bottle with a white label on it, one for each of us. The label had instructions as to dosage and was hand written. Inside were irregularly shaped white pills. Actually, they were all pretty much round, but they weren't all exactly uniform. The thing is, all our pills looked exactly the same, except for the fact that they were different sizes. And they seemed to change from visit to visit. One visit, I'd come home with tiny white pills, and the next, I'd have huge ones.
There was one quality that they all shared. You see, you didn't swallow them, you sucked on them till they dissolved, and they all, no matter what size, tasted like sugar. I was told they were homeopathic, but I know confection when I taste it.
Hot Treatment. Cold Treatment.
The next medical advance I remember was in Jenkintown, or thereabouts. This was as good as it got for doctor visits. Not only because the treatment was pleasant, but because my father had gotten hooked to listening to the all news radio station KYW, and at that time, they broadcast all the Phillies games in the evenings. So on the way home, we invariably listened to the Phillies. I must have been at just the right age, because it's the only place I remember listening to baseball on the radio, but to this day, I get all nostalgic whenever I hear baseball on the radio. I don't even have to like the team. I just love to listen.
I seem to remember that this office was in a tall building. When you were in an examining room, you could look out the window and I remember there being a view.
We were always there at night, presumably because we went after my father got off work, and my father usually took my sister and I. I don't remember my mother coming, or my little brother either, though I'm sure they did at some point or another.
This office was much different from the Sugar Pill guy. This was professional, and much bigger. It had a normal waiting room with plenty of magazines and soft seating. But one thing that was unusual for a doctor's office, is that it was warmly lit. I know that sounds like a strange thing for a kid to remember, but it was almost dark, with table lamps and sconces instead of the bright institutional flourescents you'd normally associate with a doctor's office. It was lit like you'd light a spa.
And that's kind of what it was. Your initial consultation was with a doctor and involved first taking your pulse on your left wrist, then taking your pulse on your right. The idea, was to be balanced, or something like that. I forget. But if your right pulse was strong than you left pulse, you needed one treatment, or if it was the other way around, you needed a different treatment. That was it. There were just two treatments for whatever it was that ailed you. Here's the thing with all these doctors. I don't remember being sick. I don't remember anything ailing me. But we were going to get well anyway.
The best of the two treatments was called a Warm treatment. The idea being that your arteries were too constricted and were not letting the blood flow naturally to the whole body. To remedy this, you'd lay on your side, and a nurse practitioner would massage your back down the topside of your spine. She (it was always a female nurse) would rub in little circles starting from just below your neck to the base of your spine. How long she did this depended on how constricted you were which they figured out by taking your pulse. When your time was up, you'd switch sides, and she'd massage the other side of your spine. It was very pleasant. Normally, I'd bring a magazine from the waiting room and read while they worked. Occasionally, I'd get a talker, but the idea was to relax, so they usually worked quietly.
The other treatment was called a Cold treatment and while it wasn't quite as nice as the Warm treatment, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. When you tell someone you're going to give them a cold treatment, it brings up images of Puritanical dunking or some Soviet interrogation technique. When your arteries were too relaxed, they also didn't let the blood flow properly, and so to remedy this problem, you needed a cold treatment. A cold treatment involved the same pulse taking, the same dimly lit room and also laying on your side. But this time, instead of a nice long back rub, a nurse came in, lifted your shirt and with a long cotton swab that looked like a king sized Q-tip, dipped it in Witch Hazel and ran it down the length of your spine. The cooling action of the rubbing alcohol constricted the blood vessels around your spinal chord and got your blood moving again. This had to be done at specific intervals and for a specific number of times, depending on what they'd learned from your pulse. So you laid on your side, read a magazine, and every five minutes, a nice nurse would come in and run a cold swab up and down your back. This was especially nice in the summer, which is as long as I remember going.
The warm treatment/cold treatment facility also had homework. The office was where we checked in and got our prognosis, but we had to continue with the treatments once we got home. That meant if you were on warm treatments, you got someone to rub your back, but if you were on cold treatments, you had to learn to self administer.
To do a cold treatment, you simply took the swab, dipped it in a bottle of witch hazel, and started at the base of your neck and went down as far as you could reach. Then you went under your shirt and went as high as you could, presumably to the point you left off, and continued on down. If you had to do this 15 times, with three and a half minutes in between, a treatment would take you nearly an hour. Not that you couldn't be doing something else, like watching TV, but you couldn't really leave the house.
A word about witch hazel. I have no idea why it's called that but at the time, I'd never heard of it before. I knew what rubbing alcohol was, but assumed witch hazel was something used for cold treatments only. It was, after all, called "witch" hazel. It sounded quacky. I was stunned later to find it in drug stores and supermarkets. I wasn't so simple as to not realize our medical habits were strange. I had a hard time believing that witch hazel was something the general public needed.
I had seen my father giving himself a cold treatment once and after he swabbed himself, he stood in front of the air conditioner, the one in the upstairs hallway outside his bedroom, lifted his shirt and allowed the forced air to dry his back.
So the next day, I was ready to go to the public pool when I was told that I had to give myself a cold treatment (I always seemed to be on cold treatments, never warm) before I left for the pool. This seemed ridiculous to me because it was June and the pool was still fairly cold. Wasn't the entire pool experience one big cold treatment? But, I did as I was told.
Only I didn't want to wait an hour before I left. I wanted to leave as quickly as possible. So taking a cue from my father, I gave myself my first swab then stood in front of the air conditioner. This was great, I was dry in 20 seconds and on to my next swab. I was done the whole thing in less than five minutes.
I started to leave for the pool, when my father stopped me.
"I thought I told you to give yourself a treatment," he said.
"I did," I answered. "I'm done."
"How can you be done?" he asked. "How many did you do?"
"Fifteen," I answered brightly.
"In five minutes?" he asked.
"I stood in front of the air conditioner," I told him.
"Why would you do that?" he asked, a little agitated.
"You do it," I said.
"So my shirt doesn't stick to my back," he said. "You can't just do fifteen strokes in five minutes! Good grief!"
He seemed a little concerned at this point, and he called my mother in to commiserate. I don't know what they thought would happen, but I guess they thought my blood pressure would go through the roof or something. As it happened, I had to stay around for another hour for observation, so I didn't get out the door any faster than I would have. I did end up going to the pool that day and I never had any deleterious effects that I knew of. But that was the last time I tried to give myself a lightning cold treatment.
Like everything else, the warm treatment/cold treatment practice lasted for awhile then went by the wayside. Although this one did last for longer than most. For one thing, the treatments didn't cost anything. We stopped going to the doctor's office after that first summer, and I doubt I ever got or gave myself treatments after that summer. But for years after that, my parents, who were obviously both perpetually constricted, gave each other warm treatments. At least that's what they claimed. I think it was just a good excuse to get the other person to give them a back rub.
Hey, all in the name of medical science.
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