The Power of Words. G. Wayne Miller: Searching the past for sources

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G. Wayne Miller: Searching the past for sources

Related link: Into the Heart: A medical odyssey

      The hardest part of writing the open-heart series was bringing the patients to life. Without their intimate stories, and their families' stories, I would have been left with a meager medical thread that lacked much drama.
      The three patients who were most important to the narrative -- Patty Anderson, Dorothy Eustice and Gregory Glidden -- were all dead. Dead for more than 40 years, in fact. One (Dorothy) had never been written about anywhere, not even in the medical literature -- all I had was her name and an approximate date of death. Gregory's operation had been described in the literature -- but without details of his life and his family, let alone the day-to-day progress of his case. And when I started, I didn't even have the name of Patty Anderson. All I had was her sex, her age and the date of her operation.
      Luck, hard work and a network of contacts in the academic-medicine community that I have built over a long time prevailed.
      Let me describe Patty's case as an example.
      ``A girl of six,'' as Patty was referred to in the medical literature, wasn't much to go on. None of the surgeons who operated on her remembered her name, never mind her social circumstances; she died almost 50 years ago, the surgeons were well into their 80s and even if their memories had been razor-sharp, it wouldn't have mattered. Once you lose a patient, you lose track of the family. And Minnesota law doesn't let just anyone see the records. You need a notarized consent, signed by next of kin.
      Here was my first stroke of luck: A sympathetic pathologist showed me the autopsy report. He had blacked out the 6-year-old girl's name, as the law requires. I held the report to the light and saw, beneath the black, ``Patty Anderson.''
      Anderson of course is one of the -- if not the -- most common surnames in Minnesota. But I knew the date of the operation, from the literature. So I went to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's morgue and read through the funeral notices for that week. There it was: a 3/4-inch notice, with the names of Patty's parents: Betty and Lloyd. I found no Betty and Lloyd in today's phone book -- that would have been real luck -- so I started following them through city directories, starting in 1951, when Patty died.
      I lost them -- together, at least -- in about 1960. There were still several Betty Andersons and Lloyd Andersons in Minneapolis, but not living together. Had they divorced? Died? Left town, still a married couple? Did they have other children? On through the city directories I went.
      Then, in about 1990, luck again: A Betty and Lloyd Anderson reappeared in Minneapolis, living together (turns out they had been in Wisconsin for years). I went to the phone books -- I was now working at the Minneapolis Public Library -- and found a phone number and an address, for 1990!
      But then, seeming bad luck: In about 1993, Betty and Lloyd disappeared. I figured they must have died; they must have been, after all, in their 70s.
      So I was prepared to drive by their last-known address and see if the neighbors remembered them. Before going, I consulted the current city directory -- and found that an Anderson was living right next door. A relative, perhaps?
      I called that number, and an elderly woman answered the phone. I asked if she had known a Betty or Lloyd Anderson who had once lived next door. The woman was VERY suspicious; I imagine she thought I was some kind of crook, and she almost hung up on me. But by being exceedingly nice, I managed to coax from her these facts: Betty and Lloyd were indeed dead, and they'd had no other children; but a nephew, now a retired Minenapolis cop, was alive. This woman gave me his phone number.
      By the way, this Mrs. Anderson was not related to Betty and Lloyd. She just happened to have the same last name -- and live next door.
      I called the nephew, who turned out to be a great guy. He had photos and memories of Patty and her parents -- and names of many more of Patty's distant relatives, all of whom I interviewed. He also signed the medical release form, which gave me hundreds of pages of background -- nurses' notes, especially, were useful, as they gave almost an hour-by-hour account of life on the ward. The medical records were the real gold mine. Thank God, they hadn't been thrown away, or lost.
      The details differ, but getting the stories of Gregory and Dorothy -- indeed, of most of the patients -- involved similar luck, work, and connections.

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