A House Call to Remember

For many people the notion of a house call by a doctor is of an era gone by.  Yet, last Sunday, I made such a visit to one of my long-time patients named Karl. Karl and Nelly, his wife of nearly sixty years, live in the Bronx and used to schlep by car to my former office in Queens. When I first moved to Manhattan, they continued their schlep from the Bronx by express bus; now they come by access-a-ride (and they never fail to remind me that there is a dentist on the ground floor of their apartment building.)

So, when Nelly called to tell me that her husband was in pain and that he couldn’t eat, I decided to pay them a visit. I told her to put up the coffee.

I drove to their home equipped with my emergency kit (including a battery driven “drill”) and a fresh Danish pastry ring. When I got off the elevator, there was Karl waiting for me with a big smile. He is warm and engaging at 89 years old, but is increasingly forgetful and dependent on Nelly. “I married a younger wife so she can take care of me”, he boasts.  It took me about ten minutes to minister to Karl’s oral malady while he was sitting in his easy chair with a pole lamp as the source of illumination.

What followed was an unforgettable experience.

We sat at the kitchen table and over a cup of coffee and the Danish and Karl told me his story of survival during the Holocaust. In 1940, being a Jew in Poland, he was forced into the Lodz Ghetto, second in size only to the Warsaw Ghetto.

He told me of the hunger and the strife and the labor that he and the other children were forced to do. He recounted how in 1944, the ghetto was destroyed and he was sent to Auschwitz and then later to Bergen-Belsen.  Because of his youth and relative fitness, he was put to work rather than being sent to the showers.  How arbitrary it seemed, “You in this line…you in that line.”  He recalled when liberated by the Russian army at war’s end, he weighed mere 80 lbs.  And he told me the tale of his serpentine emigration to America by way of Russia, Belgium, Paris and finally New York.

I was so totally captivated by Karl’s words and the timbre of his voice that I lost all track of time. We were in the kitchen for 1-½ hours.  What started as a house call for a dental emergency became a deeply transformational moment-one that I shall never forget.

NEVER FORGET!