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DG: Do you remember your first paying patient?

RI: Yeah, my first patient actually was a hakujin boy. He was a teenager who was playing athletics and injured himself and over the telephone, according to the appointment, he's hurting in his back. Well, until he came I worried about, "I wonder if it's polio? I wonder if it's..." [Laughs] I mean, I'm thinking of all these little, very serious diagnoses. But when he came, when he said that he, he was playing soccer or something and fell and injured his back, well, then it became just a backache or something like that. [Laughs] But yes, I remember my first patient.

Then gradually, I think that I began to have more and more obstetrical patients who began to come because of my ability to speak Japanese. And then at about that time, lot of the servicemen came back with Japanese brides. And then they found that there is a doctor who speaks Japanese, so of course that was a very big advantage. And so I took care of them. And you know, there's nothing like being able to tell a doctor your own complaints and being able to express them yourself, because when you have to interpret, have a interpreter, it just takes that feeling away. And I certainly felt that when, since I referred a lot of patients to doctors, other doctors, when they were hospitalized, of course I went to see them, too. And many times I would be at a bedside along with the consulting doctor. And so when the consulting doctor goes by himself to see the patient they said, "Well, how are you, Mrs. So-and-so," and they say, "Oh, fine. I'm okay." When I come along they say, "Oh, koko ga itai." "Oh, asoko ga itai," and they tell me really all the details, but, Japanese people in front of other hakujin people, they don't want to express negative feelings so they say, "Oh, everything's fine." But when I came along they told me the truth. And so I'd be telling the other doctor exactly what it was or I'd put it in the notes, the hospital notes so that they'll know what the real feeling is. So, I've always felt that that was an advantage. And sometimes when the other consulting doctor and I are together and I'm asking the patient questions in Japanese, I notice that these hakujin doctors are looking at me and looking at the patient. And they're sort of marveling that we could communicate so well. [Laughs] So, I'm sure that it was an advantage. And then, every now and then, when, for instance a patient has appendicitis and I call the surgeon and the patient gets the surgery done, then years later I said, "Now who was that doctor that operated on you?" And they say, "I don't know, but you were there." So I say, "Oh, yeah, it was Dr. So-and-so," but they don't remember who operated on them, but they know I was there.

So I always assisted. Every surgery I assisted, and I knew exactly what was going on so that later, when the patient came to see me, I would tell them exactly what happened because I was there. So, to me it was an advantage, but that's because I was a family physician. And internists, specialists in internal medicine don't assist in surgery. So I loved to assist in surgery and I felt that I was very good because my hands, I would say, I'm kiyo, that means hands are what? I mean good, I mean, I could use my hands well. So then I remember one time I was assisting in surgery and there was a big kidney stone. Well, by big, you know, I would say maybe like that. And this surgeon who was operating was big, tall, like six-footer and big hands and all that. And he was trying to put his finger in through a track and trying to get that stone but he couldn't get it. So he said, "Ruby, you put your finger in there and get it." And oh, I put my finger in there and got it right out. [Laughs] So I figured there was an advantage that way.

Then another thing I remember about surgery is my assisting, I'm short, and then lotta times the doctors are close to six feet, they say, "Okay, here comes Ruby. Now bring the stools." I said, "I think I need three stools, three stacking stools," because this doctor is real tall. [Laughs] And so then, I'd be eye-to-eye with that surgeon when we're operating because we're always opposite of each other. That kind of thing, which is sort of funny, but anyway... I remember one time, one surgeon said, "Better put a rope around this doctor so that she won't fall into the incision." [Laughs] I thought, wow, but he was joking with the nurses about that, but... I enjoyed surgery because I felt that I was very good at tying knots and helping with retracting and holding this and that and...

<End Segment 37> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.