Musings: Dad's memorable recovery
Meadowbrook Hospital on Hempstead Turnpike in the 1970s, left, and Nassau University Medical Center today. Credit: Newsday archives
The recent story “LI teen’s tetanus battle” [News, March 31] reminded me of a personal experience from the 1940s involving my father.
When I was 15, my father had a nail driven through his hand while working. A doctor diagnosed him with lockjaw and admitted him to Meadowbrook Hospital, now Nassau University Medical Center. After two days, the doctors feared the worst, telling my brother that my father probably would not survive.
In a last-ditch effort, one doctor advised my brother to travel to the city to get an anti-tetanus serum. My brother did so, and my father made a full recovery. His case was so unusual that it was written up in the New England Journal of Medicine.
I have always been grateful to Meadowbrook Hospital for the part it played in saving my father’s life.
Reading that NUMC is in such poor financial condition today is a sad turn of events for a hospital that once held such significance for my family.
— Betty Small, Deer Park
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