Wake-Up Call: Tales from a Frontier Doctor

by Sterling Haynes

Overview

In his second book, Wake-Up Call, Sterling Haynes begins by telling us that at the age of seventy a left hemisphere stroke rearranged his brain. "My right creative side took over and I started to write poetry and humour. I was left with a partially paralyzed right foot, but a writer's creative right brain. I think I got the better of the deal, a new brain in trade for a foot. The funny episodes in my medical practice became hilarious. The sad, melancholy parts of my life's memories looked less bleak." Haynes goes on to share the humorous and sometimes bizarre tales of his life as a doctor; a man shoots off his big toe in a drunken binge and then begs the doc to get him to Sunday Mass on time, an inmate swallows a spoon to avoid solitary confinement, an accident with a Murphy bed leaves a man hanging for more than ten hours.

"I worked long hours, made house calls, went out with the ambulance and flew to remote accident areas, sometimes receiving payment in kind: hinds of beef, lamb and moose, bags of potatoes and turnips and on one occasion, a big game guide brought me a four point buck in payment for delivering his first son, leaving the dressed carcass in the centre of my waiting room. " Haynes tells it like it was in these tales of a frontier doctor, from Williams Lake to Alabama.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781894759441
Publisher:	Caitlin Press Inc.
Publication date:	03/15/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Raised in Alberta, Sterling Haynes received his medical degree from the University of Alberta. He served as a colonial officer in Nigeria and practised medicine in the Cariboo, Alberta and Alabama. Now retired, he lives in Westbank, BC, and travels extensively in Central America. His articles and poetry have been published in journals including 'The Canadian Journal of Rural Medicine' and the 'Medical Post'.

Table of Contents

Introduction 9

Beginnings 13

Mother Blood 14

Dr. Harry 18

Eliot Cohen Corday, The Famous Cardiologist 27

Tattoos and TB 32

The Jolly Green Giant 37

White Boy 41

The Old Burn Unit 46

Cariboo 49

Bear Facts 50

The Alexis Creek Red Cross Outpost Hospital 55

"Doc, We Got a Problem." 60

Grace Peckinbaa from Chu-Chua 64

Divinity 69

Cut Proud 73

Bloody Business with a Safety Pin 78

A Mickey Finn 81

Tick Paralysis 84

Willoughby 87

Near-Death Experience 90

Thompson - Okanagan 93

Hockey Night in Kamloops 94

The Murphy Bed 100

Tony 104

Leo 107

Spooney 112

The Lucid Interval 116

Doug's Dilemma 119

Mary's Tomatoes 122

Medicine and Mariachi 126

You Never Know 131

Alabama 133

Willie's Jollification 134

Gouch! 138

Bubba Biscuit 141

No Coloured Waiting Rooms Here 145

Jake the Lineman 149

Blue Jeebies 153

Obadiah and Bernice 157

Acknowledgements 160