Hospital Days: A Memoir

During the late Sixties, I worked in a number of hospitals as an aide or orderly. Two of them were world famous: McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts; and the Massachusetts General Hospital, in downtown Boston. Two were in Toronto. They were my first full time jobs.

I saw incredible things, people and incidents that have stayed with me all these years: the managed blood of surgery, the chaos of emergency, tense moments in a mental ward.

These are human-interest stories, with a smattering of medical terms, where appropriate. It’s about what happened in the hospital and outside the hospital during a turbulent period in history. I learned about life and death in hospitals, which has tempered my understanding of the world ever since. Approximately 17,000 words. I am a published poet and author, produced playwright in New York City, digital artist, and wilderness canoeist.