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AI: Well, tell about that time, because you, here you had been working in the hospital for a while, but then you started having some physical pains.

PB: Well, I had pains for quite a while, and I had gone to different doctors, and they said I had a retroverted uterus, and that was giving me trouble. And doing heavy things was bothering me, like, you know, when a person, when a patient leaves the hospital, we had to wipe down the mattresses, and everything was disinfected. And that was heavy work; we'd have to move the mattresses and everything, and it was just getting to be too heavy work for me, that it was causing a strain. So finally, the doctor suggested I have surgery. So I did, I was gonna have surgery, and I guess I didn't, I didn't go on the scheduled day because I had, I had caught a cold, and the doctor even came to the house, and he bawled me out for not coming in on appointment, and I said, well, I was sick. I didn't want to come in there when I was sick, but anyhow, I did go in and have exploratory, and oh, I had, another time I went in, I had an impacted wisdom tooth.

That time I, I was in the hospital a whole week, because I had a upside-down wisdom tooth, and it's impacted, and when the dentist looked at it, nobody wanted to take it out. They didn't want to volunteer, because they'd have to dig it out. But finally, a doctor from, California doctor volunteered, and I remember going in and, of course, they give me novocaine or whatever, and he would hit it with a hammer, and every time he'd do that, it just felt like the top of my head was coming off. But anyhow, he did get the tooth out, and he gave it to me as a souvenir. So I had it for quite a while, but eventually, I don't know what happened to it. But I went home, and he said that... of course, he gave me pain pill and told me to apply ice. And so my daughter got ice from the mess hall, but the pain was getting so bad that I had to go back to the hospital. I had to call the ambulance, and I passed out by the time I, I was in so much pain. And I was in the hospital for a week, and I remember very little except that it seemed like they were always coming in and sticking a thermometer in my mouth, and telling me to gargle. But I kept falling asleep in between there.

AI: So you were in the hospital both as a worker, and also as a patient a couple times.

PB: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.