<Begin Segment 6>

MA: So how long was your residency? How many years did you do that?

KB: Well, actually... let's see, when did I start? Actually, as I mentioned, the chemotherapy that was being used was so successful that the patients didn't need as much care as previously. And one of my fellow workers told me that, "You know, we're not gonna be able to stay here very long. You better think about going into some other field." And he himself decided to go into pathology, I remember. And his wife was a radiologist, and he told me, "Why don't you go into radiology? It's really a nice field." It was something that I had no interest in at the time, I was more interested in taking care of patients. But I thought, "Well, something to think about." And some of the other doctors in our group decided to go into radiology, too, so that's, I applied for training in this field and I was accepted, so, "Okay, I'll do it."

MA: And radiologists don't work as much with patients, is that right?

KB: That's right, yeah. It's more, it's a... I should say a service to the doctors. We'd help the doctors make diagnoses and how to, what are the tests to order and how to go about taking care of the patient rather than actual care of the patient ourselves.

MA: Right.

KB: So it was a very interesting change for me, and something that I enjoyed because my personality is such that I liked to deal with fine details, and looking at an x-ray, you need to make sure you don't miss anything. Something that I thought I, I thought was suitable for me.

MA: Yeah, it seems like you were able to use your strengths in that field very well.

KB: Right, so it involves a lot of knowledge in other fields that you need to put together to make a decent diagnosis. And it's a very stimulating process that we have to go through, and I really, really enjoyed that.

MA: What other fields did you find yourself drawing upon as you were working?

KB: What other fields did I...

MA: Oh, you mentioned that you had to draw upon other sort of types of knowledge and skills in radiology in particular.

KB: Like pathology, knowing what kind of diseases can affect an individual, knowing medical conditions, a lot of cardiology, you know, you have to know all about the heart, and there are many parts of the body that comes into the picture when you're looking at an x-ray.

MA: So you started your career as a radiologist, were you still in Detroit at that time?

KB: Yes, uh-huh. It was Detroit Receiving Hospital, which here would be comparable to Harborview, it was a city hospital, took care of patients from all over the Detroit area. Very, very busy place, and for a person who is in training, it's actually a real nice situation because you come into contact with all kinds of things. Very, very interesting experience for me.

MA: What was your schedule like? I imagine it was pretty rigorous at that time.

KB: Yes. [Laughs] Well, the main thing that we had to cover was the emergency room, and that emergency room, I think, took care of all cases in the whole Detroit area. So the busiest night that occurs is on Christmas Eve when everybody starts drinking and all the drunks get hurt or whatever. And actually, they had a room where they kept these people who were drunk, dirty, and were brought in by the police, to kind of recover and get cleaned up. I mean, it was a remarkable place. I've never seen anything like that. Since I've had a chance to go through some of that, I mean, we usually don't have to deal with that kind of thing as a radiologist, but sometimes we'd get a chance to see other parts of the hospital. And one time I was on duty and I, we have our x-ray room where the films are developed. In the old days, we had to go through, the films had to go through solutions. Now, they have these digital things that you really hardly need any kind of processing. But the films would be wet, and we used to have what was called wet reading, so you pull this wet film out of this container and look at it. [Laughs] And then everybody would want to see what I was looking at, and had to explain to them, "Well, okay, this bone is broken," or, "There's pneumonia in this lung," or whatever.

MA: And you would work with the doctor?

KB: Right.

MA: With the patient's doctor and discuss that?

KB: Uh-huh. And it was a, quite a learning experience. I think we learned fast and a lot in a situation like that.

MA: Were you on call a lot? Like at night, in the middle of the night and stuff?

KB: Right, we were on. We would like, it'd be like a twenty-four hour detail, where we would work in the department during the day, and then at night we would go, they had a little unit in the emergency department, and we would stay there. If it was a quiet night, they might, we had a room where we could lie down, so once in a while, during, usually during the week when it wasn't so busy, then we would get a chance to rest.

MA: What was your husband's, what work was he doing at this point? What was his sort of career path?

KB: He was, at that time he was working in a bank, he was an auditor.

MA: So then how long were you actually in Detroit after you finished your residency?

KB: We left -- okay, after my residency, I was sort of, I didn't know what I was going to do. And the, one of the professors said, "No problem, no problem, we got you all settled to go to the veterans hospital in Dearborn," so that was fine. Actually, there were two or three of us who were assigned to this hospital, and I was there until... let's see, we moved from Detroit in 1960.

MA: And that's when you went to Dearborn?

KB: No, actually, we left Dearborn, actually, we left that area, Michigan area in 1960. So I went to... let's see. From, from my training... I should have checked on this.

MA: Oh, it's okay.

KB: From my training, I went to, as a staff at the Veterans Hospital in Dearborn.

MA: What was it like working at the veterans hospital? How was that?

KB: It was, it was not as hectic as the city hospital, and of course we were working with men mostly. I doubt very much there were women patients at that time. I can't remember that it was, there was anything really different about it.

MA: And these were all veterans who had been injured?

KB: Right, yeah. Mostly World War II veterans, and I think there were... let's see. The Vietnam veterans I think came later. So maybe, mostly they were World War II veterans.

MA: Okay.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.