George Washington and Me

Hard to believe, maybe, but the first president and I have something important in common.

The following essay appeared recently in the annual journal of the Hope Academy of Senior Professionals…

One morning about 12 years ago, I woke up with a sore throat. I was annoyed, of course, because I had a lot to do that day. Being sick wasn’t on my calendar. My sore throat seemed worse than usual, though, kind of like the strep throat I remembered having several years before.

Having diagnosed my illness – and wanting to get back to work – I went to the CVS near our home. The store advertised a “minute clinic,” and I remember thinking that would be “just perfect.” I would have my throat checked, get some antibiotics, and be on my way to getting better. No need to try and get an appointment with my primary care physician. Who knows how long that would take?

At the “minute clinic,” I remember being seen almost immediately and thinking that this kind of health care was going to be the wave of the future – quick, easy, and not too expensive. But when the “certified family nurse practitioner” asked me to open my mouth and say “ah,” she immediately looked concerned and said, “I think you should head over to emergency at Broward General.”

I asked the nurse practitioner what she saw in my throat, and she said, “I’m not sure,” which is not something you ever want to hear in a setting like that. I always like being the easy and routine case. I never want to be in a situation where the person examining me calls all the residents and the rest of the medical staff over and says, “Hey, have a look at this!”

My wife and I were living in Fort Lauderdale at the time, and the Broward Health Medical Center (which everyone still affectionately called “Broward General”) was the closest hospital to where we lived. It was also large and imposing, as city hospitals tend to be. The drive to the hospital took only a couple of minutes, and soon I found myself in the waiting room.

Compared to some of the people around me – a few of whom seemed gravely ill – I appeared to be quite healthy. Overall I felt healthy too, except that my throat continued to be sore, and I noticed that swallowing was becoming more and more difficult. After a little more than an hour, the emergency room doctor walked into the small, curtained examining area where I was sitting and took a look at my throat. He said, “Mmm, I think you need to go upstairs and see the ENT.”

“What is it?” I asked, and unlike the nurse practitioner, he seemed to know or have a suspicion about what it was. But he wasn’t going to say. “I think you need to go upstairs” was all I was able to get from him.

By this point, I noticed that I was having an even harder time swallowing, and an emergency room nurse provided me with a paper cup into which I started to spit excess saliva. That was a first. I started to be concerned. I started to realize that I would not be going to work that day.

After filling out the required paperwork and insurance forms, I headed upstairs as directed and took my seat in yet another waiting room. It was lunchtime by this point, and I was informed that the ENT would be back soon. No one said he was at lunch, just that he was out “at the moment.” So, I sat and waited with my spit cup, thinking the worst.

I have been a healthy person for much of my life, and before this incident I had little experience with health care in this country. As I mentioned, I was always grateful to be an easy and routine case. Other than some sports-related injuries in high school – a couple of broken bones, which I have always been proud of  – I have avoided hospitals and emergency rooms. On this particular day, however, I had the sinking feeling all that was about to change. Something was happening in my throat, and I knew by this point that it wasn’t good.

At long last, my name was called, and I was escorted to another examining room. The ENT soon appeared, took one look at my throat (with the help of a tiny flashlight), and said, matter of factly, “Oh, George Washington died from that.”

It turns out that there is some debate among historians about what exactly Washington died from, but a peritonsillar abscess seems like the most likely possibility. In laypersons’ terms, it’s an area of pus-filled tissue at the back of the mouth next to one of the tonsils. Without treatment, a person with an abscess in the throat will eventually be unable to breathe, which is what happened to Washington over the course of several agonizing hours, during which he said goodbye to his wife and faced the prospect of his death.

Because I was fortunate enough to be born in 1953 and not 1732, medical care has advanced considerably. In Washington’s case, a handful of remedies were tried, including the miracle cure known as bloodletting, which doctors performed on Washington a total of four times over eight hours, with a total blood loss, some estimate, of about 40 percent of Washington’s blood supply. My treatment, as it turned out, was far easier.

The ENT made a small, horizontal slit in the abscess, and out came a disgusting brew of blood and pus, which I was told to spit out. (It never occurred to me to swallow it.) I was then asked to gargle a saline solution, and that was that. I asked the ENT if I could have ice cream, remembering stories from elementary school classmates about eating ice cream after having their tonsils removed. And to my surprise, he seemed to encourage this plan.

And so, not quite ready to leave the hospital, and starting to like the idea of taking the day off, I went to the cafeteria and enjoyed a scoop of vanilla ice cream which, I must say, was surprisingly soothing on my throat.

Ever since my harrowing medical experience in Fort Lauderdale, I have enjoyed telling people that the first president of the United States and I have a surprising amount in common.

Photos: (above) That’s how the New York Times imagines George Washington would look today. (below) And that’s apparently how he looked most days when he was wearing his powdered wig.