Jim Goldsworthy, Columnist
Cumberland Times-News
November 28, 2008 07:49 pm
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It pleases me to learn that one of the medical buildings at the new Potomac Valley Hospital in Keyser will be dedicated to my old friend, the late Dr. Robert McCoy.
McCoy had a hand in saving my life, and he gave me some of the best advice I ever received. He was an old-fashioned doctor who expected everyone to know he was in charge and didn’t tolerate any foolishness when it came to the practicing of his profession. Some folks thought he was on the gruff side, and he was, but I liked him.
Doc was one of the regulars at my dad’s pool games in our basement. They drank beer and smoked cigarettes or cigars, and they let me come and watch. I was just a kid, and it was a treat to be granted partial entry to the world of adult males. They laughed, carried on and told jokes, and some of those men later became my friends.
McCoy was the surgeon at Potomac Valley when I fell into the bleachers while playing basketball at the high school. I almost died from internal injuries and am fortunate to still be alive.
Realizing that my situation was more than he could handle, McCoy arranged for me to go to the West Virginia University Hospital in Morgantown.
Shortly before I was to take my ambulance ride (actually, it was the Rotruck Funeral Home hearse, and we went in a snowstorm ... but at least, I didn’t have to drive), the hospital served dinner: roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans; I don’t remember what dessert was.
The nurse wasn’t impressed with the fact that I was drugged to the gills and didn’t feel like eating, had tubes running in one end and out the other, and hadn’t even been given a sip of water to drink. She was going to get it in me, one way or another.
Doc McCoy walked in and, as Jimmy Hatlo used to say, “That’s when the fun began.” I wish I had a recording of what he said, and the way he said it, because it was impressive. There have been occasions when I could have used it.
One of the things this adventure left me with is a scar that begins at my bellybutton and goes clear around to my backbone. It is a dandy scar and gets sunburned before the skin on either side of it. My mother fainted when she first saw it, and it has actually grown several inches longer in the last 45 years.
It came with plenty of stitches, and the day arrived when McCoy had to remove them. He told me it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience, and he was right. Gruff, he may have been, but there was a very human side to him, and I got to see it that day.
Afterward, he began to tell me what to expect from a life with only one kidney, emphasizing that it wouldn’t be abnormal or difficult if I simply paid attention.
Time has proved that he was right in everything he told me, and I’ve passed it on to several other folks who had lost a kidney and were concerned about their future ... including a friend who’s about to donate one to her father, may the Lord bless both of them.
McCoy said I might have to (go wee-wee, although that’s not the way he worded it) more often, and that’s been the case. However, he said that a person can survive with only one-fifth of a functioning kidney, and those who lose a kidney to an accident rarely have medical problems with the one that remains.
He said my basketball and football careers would have to end, for obvious reasons. This was an admonition I ignored for the most part — although I did make sure to avoid the sharp edges of bleachers.
Having lost a kidney also meant that I would not be able to serve in the military, he said, and that did come as a disappointment. In a way, it still does.
I wanted to go in the Navy like my cousin Jack, who sailed around the world in a destroyer, helping to keep America safe and becoming my first real-life hero. (Jack later told me the best thing the Navy ever did for him was to take him off that destroyer — he said it bobbed around like a rubber ducky sharing a bathtub with a little kid — and put him in a heavy cruiser.)
Doc told me two other things that would change my life. Young as I was, I didn’t appreciate their significance the way I would in later years.
First, he said my body would no longer be able to rid itself of waste as efficiently as it did, comparing it to an automobile that has a single-exhaust system instead of dual exhausts. I would therefore get tired more quickly than other kids, but if I just stopped to rest for a few seconds, I would be ready to go again in no time.
Then, he told me this: “You will need to drink plenty of fluids to keep your kidney flushed out and healthy. Beer is good for that.”
Don’t overexert myself, rest when I get tired, and drink beer? Eureka! The only other thing he could have told me was to welcome the attention of pretty girls.
Never mind that this was thoroughly sound medical advice.
In today’s politically correct world, where kids can get away with damn near anything by threatening their parents and teachers with being arrested for child abuse, Dr. McCoy would be exiled into pariahdom, pilloried by bloggers, crucified on cable TV pseudo-news shows (maybe even supplanting Bill O’Reilly as the world’s greatest evil in Keith Olbermann’s eyes) and abused by do-gooders everywhere for recommending beer to a 15-year-old kid.
However, I believe he’d say the same thing about his critics that I would:
To hell with them, if they don’t like it.
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