How The Department of Immigration Saved My Life

By Ben Robicheau ~ brobicheau@cogeco.ca

As any Islander well knows, one of the disadvantages of living in this unique but relatively remote part of the Province has always been the lack of certain services that people on the mainland take for granted: the one service that’s probably the most important to most people is health care. Several years ago the Islands were chosen as a test site to experiment with the position of nurse-practitioner and although the experiment itself has more-or-less worked out and people are more than happy to have a clinic and a health-care provider available, finding a qualified nurse-practitioner who can adapt to the Islands lifestyle and at the same time keep the powers-that-be happy seems to be an elusive and on-going challenge.

Up until sometime in the 1980’s, the Island communities had their own resident doctor, the result of a Dept. of Immigration program that seemed to be designed to attract doctors to Canada from The British Isles. The reward for agreeing to serve for a certain length of time in some far-flung corner of the province was a faster and easier trip through the immigration process. The aspiring new Canadians that came to Freeport would move into the big old house near the bottom of Crocker’s Hill that was a combination family residence, medical clinic and pharmacy, and usually stay for the required four years before moving on and being replaced by another British newcomer. This revolving-door system of attracting doctors was not exactly an ideal situation, but for the most part it worked. In fact, in some ways it worked very well. The people who came here were generally well-educated, often came from cities where they had access and exposure to the latest developments, and had usually spent time working with considerably larger populations so had acquired a much wider experience base than the typical country doctor. This put us in the unique situation of often having a medical service that was in some ways equal to or even superior to that which was available in other parts of the province. In fact, I believe that if this system had not been in place, I would not be alive today.

When I was only a few days old, my parents noticed that I was not able to keep my food down. Various well-intentioned people advised the new parents not to worry, I probably just needed to get used to eating, or maybe they were feeding me too much, or maybe it was too little, or possibly I was swallowing too much air as I ate. But when things didn’t improve with time and I started getting lethargic and losing weight, they took me to Digby Hospital where it was determined that I was most likely suffering from an allergy to mother’s milk and putting me on formula would solve the problem. After several days on formula, I still was not doing any better so it was back to Digby, where the advice now was to try a different formula. This did not help either and by now I was nearly a month old and getting dangerously malnourished and dehydrated. While all this was going on the latest doctor, a Dr. O’Reilly, had arrived in Freeport from Dublin, Ireland and my father, now feeling increasingly desperate and not so confident in the advice he had been getting from Digby, gave him a call.

To my father's surprise, upon hearing a description of my symptoms, the doctor immediately hung the phone up on him. Twenty minutes later he was standing in our kitchen giving me an examination. After seeing my violent reaction to being fed, he told my parents he thought he knew what was wrong; I appeared to be suffering from a condition called pyloric stenosis; but to be sure, he wanted a second opinion. Fortunately Dr. O’Reilly’s wife was also a doctor, so I was bundled up and taken to Freeport where, without being told what her husband suspected, Mrs. O’Reilly examined me and almost immediately also diagnosed the problem as being pyloric stenosis.

Pyloric stenosis is a condition that appears in about 3 out of every 1000 infants, it appears mostly in first-born boys, is four times more common in boys than girls and is usually fatal if left untreated. The over development of a certain muscle constricts the bottom of the stomach, shutting off the entrance to the intestines. Since the stomach contents can’t exit in the normal manner, it all goes back the way it came, resulting in what is accurately described as “projectile vomiting”. Although the effects of pyloric stenosis were first observed in 1717, it wasn’t until 1887 that it was diagnosed as a medical condition through autopsies of infants who had died of it. Although there were earlier attempts to rectify the problem with surgery, it wasn’t until 1917 that a Dr. Ramstedt came up with an operation that reliably corrected the condition without killing more patients than it saved. Even today, it is not known exactly what instigates the muscle thickening that causes pyloric stenosis to occur.

With both the Dr. O’Reillys agreeing on the diagnosis, and considering my rapidly deteriorating condition, it was decided that I had to get to the hospital immediately. Dr. O’Reilly told my father to call and hold the ferry in Tiverton. When he called the telephone exchange and said he needed to get a message to the ferry, the operator, Charlie Young, informed him that that party line was busy and hung up. When Dr. O’Reilly heard this he instructed Dad to call back and say it’s an emergency; this time Charlie said, “Why the Hell didn’t you tell me that the first time? I’ll get those old biddies off the line!” The next thing Dad heard was some women talking and then Charlie telling them in no uncertain terms that he needed the line.

At first, Digby Hospital was not sure what to make of this new-comer with the Irish accent when he showed up with two distraught parents and a deathly ill baby. The doctors were reluctant to accept his diagnosis of a condition that they appeared to be unfamiliar with, and even more reluctant when he insisted that the only solution was an immediate operation on a weak and sickly month-old infant. No one at Digby Hospital had ever performed this procedure, and although Dr. O’Reilly had seen it performed just before leaving Britain, he was not yet accredited at the Digby Hospital and therefore could not perform it himself, so he had to convince someone else to do the surgery. The Digby doctors suggested keeping me for observation for a few days to see if they could improve my condition, but Dr. O’Reilly insisted that I was rapidly approaching the point of no return, without the operation my condition was not going to improve, and within  hours I would be too weak to survive the procedure, it had to be done immediately. Finally Dr. McCleave stepped forward and said he would attempt it with guidance from this insistent Irishman .

Obviously the operation was a success or I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it. Dr. McCleave and Dr. O’Reilly were happy to tell my parents that I had survived but they did warn them that due to the severe lack of nourishment I experienced in my first few weeks of life there would be ongoing health problems; my growth would probably be stunted, I would most likely be sickly all my life, and I would probably be mentally deficient. I eventually grew to be 6’2” and never had any unusual trouble with my health along the way, so I’m happy to be able say that at least two of their three predictions did not come to pass!

As far as I can tell, I was the first baby to be operated on for this condition at Digby General Hospital, most likely the first in all of Digby County and possibly one of the first in the Province. Four or five years later, Dad ran into Dr. McCleave on the street and, after asking how I was doing, Dr. McCleave informed him that since operating on me, he had performed the same procedure on a dozen or so other children.

By the time I was born in 1948 pyloric stenosis had been well documented in medical literature for over sixty years and the solution to the condition had been known for nearly thirty years; yet it took a combination of luck, fate, and the Canadian Department of Immigration to bring Dr. O’Reilly from Dublin to Freeport just in the nick of time and with the experience to identify my problem and the knowledge to fix it. That, and the willingness of Dr. McCleave to take a chance on the word of someone he barely knew, saved not only my life, but also the lives of many other Digby County kids.