The Sad Stethoscope Saga

I once read that the stethoscope was invented in France. Up until its invention, physicians assessed the cardiac and pulmonary noises by placing their ear directly on the chest of their patients. As the story goes, a certain French family had a daughter who fell ill. They took her to the local doctor, but refused to have her assessed in this manner, as they considered it indiscreet. He eventually circumvented the problem by inventing a very, very rudimentary stethoscope. Personally, I doubt the veracity of the story. I find it much more likely that some nasty, decrepit, foul-smelling, TB-ridden patient coughing up nasty luggies walked into the office of some aristocratic doc somewhere and wanted to be examined. In an effort to maintain as much distance between himself and the patient as possible, the doctor then invented the stethoscope.

My last stethoscope was a nice Littman with the standard black tubing that I paid about $80 for. It was functional and worked very well. I had purchased it about a year ago, so I had not had a lot of time to get to know it and become attached to it. Despite this lack of attachment, I still very much regreted losing it a few months back. I have no idea where it went. I probably mislaid it somewhere in some ICU. In any case, its gone.

My mourning over this loss was relatively short-lived and by the next day I was back to being my normal cheery self. Perhaps my heart had been prepared for this loss, thereby blunting the trauma of the experience, by the loss of the stethoscope preceding that one. It had also been a Littman with black tubing. It was a higher end model, and was somewhat more elegant appearing. It had been my very first stethoscope. One of the on-campus medical groups put all of the first year medical students names in a hat, drew mine, and gave me the stethoscope.

I became rather attached to it over the ensuing five years. By the end of its tenure, the ear pieces were cracked, the bell was occasionally falling apart, and the tubing was permanently molded into the conformity of its position in my coat pocket. However, there was no way I was parting with it. Every patient I had done a physical exam on as a medical student and then as an intern was listened to by it. I was emotionally attached.

Then disaster struck. It mysteriously disappeared. I can't imagine that anyone would have stole the thing from my pocket, as it was no longer very attractive appearing. Maybe it had become colonized by some super-bug type of bacteria that ate through the rubber and metal and just simply vaporized it. In any case, I was somewhat depressed by its loss, and kind of moped around for a week.

I recently entered another contest for a stethoscope. This one was even supposed to be monogramed with the winner's name. I almost didn't bother filling out an entry form. It was 5 whole lines of information. That takes way too long to write down, and I no longer have that sort of attention span. After I handed my entry form in, they handed it back saying that I had missed a line and needed to put some sort of contact information in it. Yeah, I guess that would sort of be the point of filling that out, so I did.

So anyway, my good luck with stethoscope giveaways has prevailed, and I will soon be carrying a stethoscope around with me again. Though this one sounds like it will be fancier than its predecessors, I'd still much rather have my very first one. However, this one will have my name on it, so perhaps when my early onset Alzheimers strikes again and I lose it, it just maybe may find its way back to me.