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| Dr. Pascal Spino |
I was 19, a drop-out from Maryland Medical Secretary School at Hagerstown. Md. in 1965. My dad, Charlie Yezek, worried about the aimlessly wandering from job to job; first as a waitperson in Howard Johnson’s at New Stanton, Penna., and I resigned my self as knitter; socks, cuddle caps, and sweaters. Yes, the resume had holes in it, I was a terrible waitress and a half-bad knitperson.
As a favor, Charlie called Selim, looking for an assistant. As it happened, Selim interviewed medical secretaries just this weekend. Favor time for Charlie? Grudgingly, I took the job, with the insurance forms, half-a-hour lunches and scheduled appointments. I was fired; too long lunch-breaks and never showing up. Doctors hate that.
In the 10 months stint, Dr. El-Attrache was a remarkable man. He is an orthopedist, a skilled surgeon and kind, gentle doctor. He was a tiny man, 5’2”, stocky, full of ideas and concepts. In the operating room, he used a step-stool. He founded, in the ‘60‘s, the Ski Patrol at Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania, fractured fibulas abound.
Veronica “Vera” Doniet El-Attrache, his wife, a registered nurse and always smiling, married April 2, 1958. She had a razor-sharp wit, a stately woman, at least 5’ 9”, and the four kids meant everything to Vera. Neal, Reid, Dean and Robin; a doctor, two dentists and a pet retreat for animals. She died August 7, 2005 of ovarian cancer. She was 70.
By now, Frank Yankowski and I were married, and Jeffrey is in the womb. It was 1969, and I was exceedingly pregnant. At two weeks, Jeff was a skinny baby. He was a bottle baby and regurgitated half as much milk. The mouth, eyes and ears were crusted and he cried all the time. I called Dr. Pascal Spino, Greensburg, Penna. Waiting is a chore, sometimes hours on end in the waiting room. The children were colicky, croupy, cranky and mom's were exhausted.
Jeff had golf-ball eyes crusted with ooze, profound itching and scaly skin with strips of baby feet peeled away with dermis. Not pretty. He was two. The itching was so bad, he wore mittens I gave him to ease the pain. Kenalog cream helped, but it was a corticosteroid. He had a gamete of allergies, from trees, grasses, dust mites and milk.
Dr. Spino is the best pediatrician in southwestern Pennsylvania. He worked tirelessly, without fail. Dr. Spino referred Dr. Martin Murcek in Greensburg, Penna., an allergist.
Two doctors, had the skill, knowledge and fortitude, an orthopedist and a pediatrician, to get the job done, with the education, commitment and perseverance.
Conversely, Robert Ferrante, 64, bought a bottle of cyanide with a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) credit card, yet, on April 15, 2013, and shipped tout suite to his laboratory.
Indeed, fuzzy thinking.
Three days later, April 18, paramedics picked his wife's lifeless (almost) body off the kitchen floor of their Schenley Farms home and scooped her to UPMC Presbyterian. She’s 41 years old and doctor.
It was too late.
Read on.
