My mother fainted in Richard Seltzer's operating room

My mother fainted in Richard Seltzer's operating room.

She wasn't the patient; she was a nurse

She told me this after I had just heard Dr. Seltzer speak about his career as a surgeon and writer at a Yale Pre-Medical Society meeting.

“What?” I exclaimed, “You?”

My mother has always been immune to gore. She has the RN's cool practicality in the face of injury or illness. I couldn't imagine her fainting because of a surgical procedure.

She thought my surprise stemmed from her having been in the same room with Dr. Seltzer.

“Well, it was when I was a student nurse at Grace, and it was my turn to observe and assist.”

“What did he do?” I asked, still incredulous.

“Oh, he was very nice,” she recalled. “He was afraid that I'd been traumatized by the procedure, which was very sad. He was removing a fetus that had died in its mother’s womb.”

“And had you?”

“No, no, I was just anemic. But I didn't have the heart to tell him. He stopped the entire operation to make sure I was all right.”

I thought about the Dr. Seltzer I had just met - a gentle, soft-spoken man who did not fit the stereotype of the callous surgeon at all. Yes, I thought, he probably would have stopped the operation, though not long enough to risk injury to the patient.

I sometimes feel as though Yale-New Haven Hospital is the epicenter of my life. I was born there, my mother worked there after graduating from Grace, other family members were treated there, and just for good measure they gave me my life a second time after a near fatal accident when I was twenty-four.

But I feel that this little vignette about Mom and Dr. Seltzer is representative of the best of Yale-New Haven as an institution. With all that was on his mind, the doctor cared enough about a student nurse’s psychological well being to halt an operation. This is the type of person one finds at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Erin Elizabeth Rowe
Cheshire, CT