Erie Tales

“Don’t take her to surgery,” barked Old Mac into the phone. “There’s been some kind of family crisis, and she’s waterlogged. Admit her for observation, and we’ll see her together in the morning. Oh, another thing . . . daily weights, starting on admission.” Continue →

One medical condition that Old Doc Mac felt quite comfortable managing was peptic ulcer, and when the Junior Partner mentioned some intriguing new research to him, the senior physician dug in. “They may be right,” he sniffed, “but too often such so-called progress is off base. My confidence is always tentative in the latest findings.” Continue →

Navigating to a late house call over ice-slicked roads, The Junior Partner finally abandoned his car to the ice. There had been a few snow flurries in January and February although nothing that lasted, but during this first week of March a chilling Chinook swept down from Canada. It left every outdoor surface in town dry but ice cold, and that evening some drizzling rain iced over everything. It glazed tree branches, roads, sidewalks, lawns and open fields. The doctor barely remained upright while making his way from office to car after their evening hours. Eventually accepting defeat, he left the vehicle to walk. It was helplessly stranded up on a side walk, one block from his destination. Continue →

The contest’s first victim appeared at the office on Saturday afternoon, a fish hook embedded in his palm. He had been enjoying the town’s annual ice fishing contest that promised a $500 winner-take-all prize. More than a hundred contestants signed up at $10 each so event organizers already deemed it a success. The Derby was named after a blue-finned species of fish once peculiar to the western end of Lake Erie. Early settlers found its flesh so sweetly delicious they fished it to extinction, and the creature lived on in memory only. Before the other Great Lakes existed, Erie had emerged from beneath the ice and begun to drain into the Gulf of Mexico. The arrangement provided a channel for several unique fish stocks. Continue →

“It means self-digestion,” explained the colleague seated by Old Doc Mac at the hospital’s annual Christmas Dinner. A retired physiologist from Cleveland who now lived along Foxcroft Shores, he had never looked after patients but added a leavening of science to County Medical Society meetings. The Hello Badge on his jacket lapel read: Jurgen Fischer PhD. What startled Old Mac into his question was the word, ‘autophagy’. They were discussing the season’s annual cascade of calories, and a corpulent Old Mac had openly admired Fischer’s recent loss of 25 pounds. Continue →

They were well into the Hallelujah Chorus when an oppressive squeeze in mid-chest took his singing voice away. The choir was practicing Handel’s Messiah for the upcoming Christmas season, and J.J. Strang decided he was in trouble. Saying nothing to the others, he excused himself to leave and drive home. Back in town from Toledo at ten o’clock that evening, he called the doctor who drove over. Their mutual suspicions were confirmed with an EKG at home and he was admitted to hospital in Port Agnes. The  specimen of blood drawn on admission for chemistries, was a salmon pink color and not the usual dark red. It was greasy with fat in fact — lipemic. Continue →

The call came from an out-of-state couple with a summer house at Foxcroft Shores. It was a Saturday night. Old Doc Mac was at the hatchery among his mutant walleyes, and the Junior Partner was on call. The patient reported cutting herself while closing up their place for the winter. Would he see her, please? She arrived at the office alone, her right hand wrapped in a bloodied towel, but remained evasive on how it happened. In the course of calmly watching him repair a deep laceration in her thumb web, she volunteered that it had happened with a ‘slipped kitchen knife, and I’m fine.’ Her clipped explanation, like that evening’s crescent moon, was as much of the circumstance as she would illuminate. Hers was the only call that night, but at 8:30 Sunday morning he was summoned to the ferry dock for his own encounter with a knife. Continue →

The autumn scent of smoke from burning leaves drifted through an open office window as the Junior Partner passed Heidi in the hall. She handed him the telephone and whispered, “Skunked kid”. Then she stood nearby suspecting he might need help. The Alton’s five-year-old had chased a skunk in the ravine beside their house. He overtook the creature as it hopped and toddled along and it sprayed him. The mother was holding him at bay — locked out of doors — and wondered what to do next? Continue →

He told authorities he had found her lying dead on his return from grocery shopping, slumped over a load of fresh laundry and not breathing. He chose to leave unmentioned that she lay next to a separate laundry basket of his own soiled clothes. ‘Dead at the scene’ the ambulance crew reported, but the couple’s peculiar relationship prompted murmuring speculation in town. The Chief found his account suspiciously laden with precision and good grammar. He would  undertake a quiet investigation, using the family car for an unannounced call on near neighbors. Continue →

The urgent call reached him at lunch over a tomato and cucumber sandwich. There had been a shooting at Cedar Beach. He found the scene easily enough — a modest summer cottage along a tired  section of beachfront — and let himself into the kitchen by a side door. Immediately the powerful smell of freshly baked cake struck him, plus a chilling spectacle of splattered blood. It seemed to be everywhere — across the kitchen floor, the kitchen tabletop and around the stove. Continue →