S07.E05: Episode 5

[awaken]

35 minutes ago, athousandclowns said:

   I worked with a British nurse in the late 70's early 80's she said nurses had to stand up when a doctor came around the nurses station ( giving up their chair etc ) 

This was still true in early 2000’s, east coast large city USA hospitals I worked in. Us peons had to immediately give up chairs and charts when the doctors breezed through. 

[Mumbles]

Quote

I'm puzzled by Trixie's decision to stay with her godmother - was that just a euphemism for rehab? If not - going to Portofino to a place that requires four wardrobe changes a day does not sound like a good idea (i.e. it sounds like a place with plenty of booze).

I thought it was just me being confused by this but now I know I’m in good company. I remember Sister Julienne telling her she needed to get treatment, so all this talk of a godmother in Portofino confused the hell out of me. Trixie doesn’t seem the kind to lie to save face.  

I wish Christopher didn’t show up, given that the difficulty with him and the daughter is one of the things that led Trixie to relapse.

On 4/16/2018 at 2:41 PM, SunnyBeBe said:

If I had not known that Sister Winifred knew Barbara and Tom, I'd not know it from the way she ran out of the door on a call. Granted, it's an emergency, but, you can yell greetings as you run off.  It was so strange, imo.  It's just one of many others that is frustrating. And what about the cake they brought...I must have missed something. Is one small cake enough for a group of people on a picnic?  

Yeah that bugged me. Hell *I* was more excited to see Barbara and I don’t work with her AND she is a fictional character! (I really was, I really like Barbara!)

As someone who is terrified of going to doctors, I felt for the woman with the phobia but if everyone in medicine was as kind and calm and encouraging as Lucille and Shelagh, maybe I wouldn’t be!

[Kohola3]

12 minutes ago, Mumbles said:

I remember Sister Julienne telling her she needed to get treatment, so all this talk of a godmother in Portofino confused the hell out of me.

Plus Phyllis essential told her she'd royally screwed up and needed help.  No way this was a fun trip to visit a relative.

[StatisticalOutlier]

On 4/15/2018 at 7:55 PM, doodlebug said:

In the US, virtually all children were being  vaccinated against smallpox routinely in 1963 and we’ve got the scars to prove it.

And to give you an idea of how long ago that was, my doctor vaccinated me on my upper back, like on my shoulder blade, instead of on my arm because that way nobody would ever be able to see it.  I guess he didn't think anybody in our town would ever wear a scandalous halter top.

[rhys]

My scar is on my shoulder blade too! So trendy for us 1950's babies (or Denver babies).

[Kohola3]

6 hours ago, rhys said:

So trendy for us 1950's babies (or Denver babies).

In my neck of the woods (Michigan) it was on the lateral side of the thigh.

[MissLucas]

Well mine's right in the middle of my upper arm. Hurt for months and I had to change my routine for getting into and out of sweaters and shirts in order to not reopen the thing. And then shortly afterwards they stopped doing it, hrmpf.

[Clanstarling]

1 hour ago, MissLucas said:

Well mine's right in the middle of my upper arm. Hurt for months and I had to change my routine for getting into and out of sweaters and shirts in order to not reopen the thing. And then shortly afterwards they stopped doing it, hrmpf.

That's where mine is. I barely remember it - I remember the blister, but I don't remember anything else about it. Military brats get so many vaccinations and shots, it's hard to remember the specifics about any given one - even with visible after effects.

[Ohwell]

2 hours ago, Kohola3 said:

In my neck of the woods (Michigan) it was on the lateral side of the thigh.

Same here, in Pennsylvania.  However, I think it was for the girls; the boys got it on the arm.  I guess the thinking was that girls didn't want a visible scar.

[Kohola3]

4 hours ago, Ohwell said:

I guess the thinking was that girls didn't want a visible scar.

That's what I was told although when my sister got hers 3 years later, it was in the arm.  

[StatisticalOutlier]

9 hours ago, Ohwell said:

12 hours ago, Kohola3 said:

In my neck of the woods (Michigan) it was on the lateral side of the thigh.

Same here, in Pennsylvania.  However, I think it was for the girls; the boys got it on the arm.  I guess the thinking was that girls didn't want a visible scar.

Well, not visible at the time. 

And I do wonder how that would play these days.

 

On 4/20/2018 at 11:19 AM, Clanstarling said:

On 4/16/2018 at 8:02 AM, Driad said:

An ancestor of mine was exposed to smallpox in the late 1830s but she had been vaccinated, which did not sound unusual from the family story. This was in rural Maine, more than a century before CTM. 

Abigail Adams had her kids vaccinated in the 1770's.

I'm behind on reading my New Yorker magazines, but it's a good thing this time because last night, I was reading an article by Atul Gawande (October 2, 2017 issue) about the concept of healthcare being available to all.  It's not unprecedented, and its first instance has to do with smallpox. 

Quoting heavily from the article...

The smallpox vaccine was invented in the late 1770s, from cowpox scabs (Abigail Adams used actual smallpox).  Shortly after Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated, he read about it and had two hundred relatives, neighbors, and slaves vaccinated, and became a champion of vaccination.  But supplies were difficult to produce and it was too expensive for most people, and after Jefferson's second term, city and state governments had almost entirely failed to establish programs to provide vaccines for their citizens, and thousands of lives continued to be lost to smallpox outbreaks.  At the same time, vaccination programs in England, France, and Denmark had dramatically curbed the disease and raised the national life expectancy.

So at Jefferson's prompting and his successor Madison's support, Congress passed the Vaccine Act of 1813 with virtually no opposition.  A National Vaccine Agent was appointed to maintain stocks of vaccine and supply it to any American who requested it, and the government was soon providing free vaccine for tens of thousands of people each year.  It was the country's first health-care entitlement for the general population, and its passage wasn't in the least controversial. 

But eight years after the law was passed, the Agent accidentally sent to North Carolina samples containing smallpox instead of cowpox, causing an outbreak around the town of Tarboro that, in a few months, claimed ten lives.  The outrage over the Tarboro Tragedy spurred Congress to repeal the program rather than repair it, despite its success.  As a consequence, the U.S. probably lost hundreds of thousands of lives to a disease that several European programs had made vanishingly rare.  It was 80 years before Congress again acted to insure safe, effective supplies of smallpox vaccine. 

I think in my mind I semi-conflated my smallpox and polio vaccinations, even though one was a horrid shot and the other was a delicious sugar cube.  But I think I assumed that both were "new" when I got them, and had no idea smallpox vaccinations had been around over 150 years.

[Ohwell]

31 minutes ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

Well, not visible at the time. 

I can still see mine on my thigh.

Actually, not to get too far off topic, but I thought I had read somewhere that the thigh was better than the arm for vaccinations, and I found it.

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/thigh-beats-arm-for-childhood-vaccine/

Edited April 25, 2018 by Ohwell

[StatisticalOutlier]

25 minutes ago, Ohwell said:

I can still see mine on my thigh.

Ah, I meant not visible by other people because presumably a girl's thigh would be covered by clothes.

[Ohwell]

53 minutes ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

Ah, I meant not visible by other people because presumably a girl's thigh would be covered by clothes.

Not mine. ; )

[Portia]

As often as not, I tune in to CTM to roll my eyes at the hokey writing and over-the-top performances (I'm looking at you, Turners). But I have to say, this episode tore me up.  Mrs. Dobson's childbirth terror (which to me read more like PTSD than a phobia) hit way too close to home for me.  I can't say I endured something as awful as her character did, but my second birth was no picnic. A lot of women were in labor at that hospital that night, and although my labor was continuing steadily if slowly, the OB (who I didn't know--my doc was out of town) apparently thought it best to move things along to make room for the next woman. With absolutely no warning he gave me a huge episiotomy and used forceps to pull out my baby boy.  I won't go into gruesome detail about the aftermath of that birth, but let's just say my recovery was unbelievably long and painful. (And I gotta say, my husband was fairly traumatized himself, having seen the whole procedure take place without even being told what was happening.) We definitely wanted at least one more child, but when I got pregnant with my third, I was suddenly flooded with anxiety.  No, it wasn't on the level of poor Mrs. Dobson's terror, but it was tough.  Thank God, a friend was able to pull some strings and get me accepted with a greatly beloved and in-demand OB who wasn't officially accepting new patients at the time.  At my first appointment with him, I burst into tears into tears as I explained how things had gone with child #2 and how embarrassed I was to now find myself terrified of giving birth.  It's been 27 years, but I still remember vividly how kind and reassuring he was.  He couldn't guarantee the exact outcome, of course--that would be irresponsible--but he reminded me that my body was designed for childbirth, and he gave me his word that he'd do everything in his power to facilitate a smooth and natural birth.  Thankfully, my third and final birth was the best yet.  I had the tiniest bit of tearing but felt absolutely great after just a couple of days. 

Forgive the long personal story, but needless to say, I was really invested in Mrs. Dobson's story and loved seeing the midwives and even that old ham Dr. Turner addressing her "irrational" fear with compassion and respect.  And I cried like a baby at her happy outcome.   

[snowwhyte]

On 25/04/2018 at 12:57 AM, StatisticalOutlier said:

 

I think in my mind I semi-conflated my smallpox and polio vaccinations, even though one was a horrid shot and the other was a delicious sugar cube.  But I think I assumed that both were "new" when I got them, and had no idea smallpox vaccinations had been around over 150 years.

Lucky you, getting a delicious sugar cube. When I went for my polio booster the doctor had no sugar cubes so she just squirted the vaccine in my mouth. Suffice to say, there is a reason they used a sugar cube. It tasted disgusting. Still, we can all be grateful for our disgusting tasting polio vaccines and painful shots and the protection that they offer. 

[JoSnowden]

When the mother-in-Law said “One way in, one way out” I just wanted to smack her.  

I love Reggie. He reminds me of Chris Burke from Life Goes On.

[RedbirdNelly]

I enjoyed this episode--it all ended happy and that was nice.

I felt for the scared mom---I grew up hearing about twilight births and I'm glad they are no longer the way things are done here, but she did seem like someone who could benefit from that. I also kind of was expecting Lucille to at least bring along some pain relieving gas and help reassure her that way. But glad it all ended well.

Violet's hair looks awful. I enjoy her with Reggie. 

I also felt for Reggie and Fred when they thought he had been exposed. Living in pandemic world now, it reminded me of the feeling when you first learn your child is under quarantine for COVID--a moment of fear and waiting to confirm he doesn't get sick (luckily so far none of us have)