Byline Backstory No. 1: A Twice-Burned Toddler Finds Anesthetic Relief

Southwest of Philadelphia, my father, Hank Bause, attended Crozer Seminary and heard a Crozer alumnus, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., practice his sermons. One of Dad ’s vivid memories as a seminarian was driving me, his 9-month-old son, to Crozer Hospital (upper left) after I had toddled into the kitchen and planted both hands down upon the open door of our heated oven. TheChester Times headlined this incident as “Child Burned on Oven.” After my father graduated from Crozer, he drove my mother and me to Stratham, New Hampshire, so he could serve as a fledgling pastor there. Less than a year after my first-degree burns at Crozer, I suffered second-degree ones in Stratham. From there, my mother Suzanne wou ld rush her hyperactive toddler to nearby Exeter Hospital (lower right) for burns from scalding tea water that I had pulled down over my right arm. Perhaps the anguish of my subsequent scarring and childhood nightmares of “roasting, like a turkey in an oven” motivated my future pursuit of the relief of pain…as an anesthesiologist. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)

Source: Anesthesiology - January 14, 2020 Category: Anesthesiology Source Type: research