Uncle Reggie Stories: “Welcome to USA”
Uncle Reggie 叔叔的故事:”欢迎来到美国” (And/Dx翻译)

Have you heard of the classic TV series “Untouchables”? After medical school I was in basic training mostly at the Queen Mary Hospital of the University of Hong Kong. After that, I was destined for America. That was unusual at the time since most Hong Kong graduate doctors went to the United Kingdom for further training. After all we were then a British Colony, the Medical School was led by Brits, and the UK was even described by elites as “the homeland”!

你听说过一部经典电视剧《不可触犯》吗?我医学院毕业以后,基础训练的地方主要是香港大学的玛丽医院。再之后,我的目的地是美国。当时这是不太寻常的,因为大部分香港毕业的医生都要去英国深造。在那时候我们毕竟是一个英国的殖民地,医学院也由英国人来管理,而且社会上层人士甚至会把英国描述成“祖国”!

Photo 1: “Untouchables” on TV… fiction and reality intersect our lives in the “Windy City”. 照片一:电视上的《不可触犯》。我们在“风城”的生活里小说与现实会相交叉。

However, American TV was much more exciting than British ones. Every Friday night the resident trainees loved to watch the TV series Untouchables, describing vicious Chicago gang warfare in bloody detail. Blood and guts wins over British manners!

可是,美国的电视剧比英剧精彩多了!每周五晚上住院实习生都喜欢看一部讲芝加哥黑手帮血腥战争的电视连续剧《不可触犯》。血肉横飞胜过英式的绅士!

Are you really going there? Once my friends learned I was going to Chicago, they mercilessly needled me. “You’re going to Chicago? They kill people all the time! They use machine guns! The schools are like ‘Blackboard Jungle’ (the movie that had just come out)!” And everyone had seen American westerns with lots of bang-bang-you’re-dead scenes. America was not a mystery, but a very dangerous place which I was going to!

你真的要去那里吗?我的朋友们一旦发现我准备去芝加哥,他们就无情地讽刺我。“你要去芝加哥?他们那边动不动就杀人!他们还用机枪呢!那里的学校都像《黑板丛林》(一部当时正在上映的电影)!”而且大家都在美国西部片里看过“砰!砰!你死了!”的场面。美国并不神秘,而是我将要到的一个很危险的地方!

How long is a honeymoon? You might have heard an old Biblical instruction for newlyweds to have a one year honeymoon. At least the husband should not be sent to war in that year!

蜜月是多长时间?你可能听过一个来自世界经典书的训诲说新婚夫妇度过一年的蜜月) 年里丈夫不应该被派遣去打仗。

We were married on a Sunday in Hong Kong, and left on the following Saturday, for our pretty wonderful “20 day honeymoon” on the way to my residency training site. Flying and stopping in Taipei, Tokyo, Honolulu, San Francisco and Seattle, before landing on the really hard ground of Chicago! Was this the start of the honeymoon year? …

我和妻子在香港结婚的日子是星期天,而接下来的星期六就离开到我住院实习的地方,顺便度过了挺美好的“二十天的蜜月”。我们坐飞机停留在台北、东京、檀香山和西雅图,最后在地面硬硬的芝加哥着陆。这难道是我们蜜月年的开始……?

What war? Within a very short few days after landing, I received my draft board orders to report to the military! The Vietnam War was going on (did I even know that?), and doctors were needed, so I was instantly conscripted (1), likely to be sent back to Asia! That was quite a welcome, especially since I was still carrying my British passport. There had never been conscription in Hong Kong, and there was not even a Hong Kong Army (remember the Brits were in charge)!

什么战争?到达后的短短几天之内我收到了一份征兵通知书!正在打着越南战争(我当时还不知道这一点呢),军队需要医生,于是我直接被征募(1),可能要派回亚洲去!这种欢迎的方式挺特别的,尤其是因为我身上还持着我的英国护照。在香港从来没有征过兵,连一个香港本地军队都不存在 (要记得那时候是英国人来管理)!

There was a bit of quick comfort when I found out that I could join a military officer Berry Plan, which allowed a delay to finish my medical specialty training, but right after that, I would be assigned wherever needed! After all, there was a war going on. And I felt strangely patriotic in a new land. I duly reported to the Selective Service Board for physical examination, and was approved. So now I was in the US military!? I wasn’t sure whether I was fully excited or not.

当我发现我可以加入一个“贝里军官计划”让我缓了一口气,这会允许我先完成医疗专科训练,不过之后要直接把我调到需要的地方。毕竟是在打仗呢。而且我也对这个新来到的地方感到一种莫名的爱国情绪。我去选拔征兵委员会正式报名体检,便被录取。我难道现在就当美国军队的一员了!?我不确定当时的感觉是兴奋还是什么。

Don’t argue with the draft? My wife and I were just adjusting to this new reality, when a new draft board order arrived. Surprise, it claimed I was actually now assigned to the lowest draft level! “After women and children,” I would tell people. Whatever the reason for reversal, I’m sorry I did not argue with them! I quickly got out of the Berry program to get back to “normal civilian life.”

不要与征兵争执吗?我和妻子刚开始适应这全新的情况时,又来了一份新的征兵通知书。让人惊喜的是,按照它我现在的征兵等级是最低的!“妇女和儿童之后才轮到我”,我会告诉别人。不管这种反转的理由是什么,我当然没有跟他们提意见!我很快离开贝里项目回到了“普通平民生活”中。

Drafted for war, then not. It was poetically consistent with the bible principle of no war in the first marital year. Though I doubt that was the bureaucratic reason.

先被征了兵,结果没被征。这诗意般符合经典书里所说的结婚第一年不参加战争的原则。虽然这大概不是官方的理由。

How often on call? I’m sure residency training is more or less similar all over the world. As the rookie, the new trainee, I was soon put on call, every other night. Starting from the bottom up! My poor new wife barely saw me. Honeymoon was an aspirational word.

一周几次值班?住院训练肯定在世界各地都是差不多一样的。作为一个新来的实习生,我很快就开始隔天地开夜班。这算是从底层做起!我可怜的新婚妻子几乎见不到我,蜜月只不过是一个令人向往的词汇。

And pretty soon I was sent to the infamous emergency room, dealing with big city gunshot wounds, rape and trauma, around the clock. It was Chicago at its best after all, highly ranked in violence scores!

而且我很快被调到一个远近闻名的急诊室,昼夜不停地处理大城市常见的枪伤、强奸及其它创伤受害者。那毕竟充分展现了在暴力排名居前的芝加哥!

Just like in the movies. A war zone essentially, so my Hong Kong friends were right. To top it off that year, we had the notorious race riots of Chicago, so it was all a baptism of fire indeed! In theology, baptism prepares you for a new better life, and so it was… But it was a long baptism. And I learned a lot of high drama medicine.

就像电影里一样,基本上是一个战场,果然我香港的朋友们说得对。除此以外,那一年我们还经历了众所周知的芝加哥种族暴乱,这一切实在是一个战火的洗礼!在神学里,洗礼是用来准备人开始一段更好的新生活的,对我而言确实如此……不过那是一场漫长的洗礼。我还学会了很多戏剧性的医疗。

Photo 2: Richard Speck, a dastardly neighbor, just “down the street from us”. From Wikipedia 照片二:理查德·斯佩克,一个“只隔几条街”的卑鄙邻居。来自维基百科。

What’s the definition of a heinous crime? Close by to us there was a hospital with a nurses training program that included many Filipina nurses. Only 2 weeks into my training, Richard Speck, a drifter, systematically killed eight nurses overnight. By knife stabbing and strangulation. A shocking crime worse than gangland murders, definitely sealing my deep distorted impression of Chicago!

罪大恶极的定义是什么?在我们附近的一所医院里有护士的培训课程,其中也有很多菲律宾籍的护士。我的实习刚开始才两个星期,有一个名叫理查德·斯佩克的流浪汉在一夜之间杀了八个护士,一个一个地把她们捅死或者掐死。这个杀人案比黑社会杀人还令人震撼,我对芝加哥的印象就定格于此!

With all this as background, we reassured ourselves that we could always move to a safer place after my training. Freedom to move, a cherished American tradition! Of course we understood also that evil lurked everywhere, not just in Chicago, which really wasn’t that reassuring. And major hospitals were often in high crime zones.

在这样的环境里,我们会安慰自己说,我的培训结束之后我们总可以搬到一个更安全的地方。通行自由不就是美国人珍惜的传统嘛!我们当然也明白,邪恶无处不在,不仅是在芝加哥,而这并不是很安慰人的。而且大医院通常位于犯罪高发区。

Can you say it snows cats and dogs? We had never seen snow before, so we were fascinated when it arrived. It was storybook-like at first, a beautiful white blanket over the city. But that winter it came down in massive amounts just for our sake. At the time, it was the heaviest snowfall in Chicago history, 68 inches of snow and 180 inches of snow drifts! Enough snow for us, for a lifetime.

可以说“倾盆大雪”吗?以前我们从来没有见过雪,所以第一场雪让我们很好奇。刚开始它像童话故事书里的一样漂亮,一个白白的被子罩在城市上。不过那一年的冬天下了特别大的雪,似乎就为了我们。当时是芝加哥市历史上最大的降雪量,积累了68英寸厚的雪,一百八十英寸厚的雪堆!对我们来说,够这一辈子了。

Photo 3: Chicago record freeze. From Wikipedia 照片三:芝加哥创纪录的大寒。来自维基百科。

Chicago basically froze over. Even the expressways froze and stopped for 3 days. Helicopters brought in patients. And I couldn’t go home, even though it was only a few blocks away! But we survived. A good story to tell…

芝加哥基本上全冻住了。连高速公路也冻着并停运三天。病人是用直升机送到医院的。我也回不了家,虽然只有几个街区的距离!可是我们顺利渡过了难关。一段讲起来很有趣的故事…

What can go wrong with a normal baby delivery? To complicate an already complicated resident doctor’s family life, our first child was born in the middle of all this. And to everyone’s puzzlement, my wife became paralyzed in her lower limbs! None of the doctors could figure out what was happening.

一个正常的分娩能出什么问题?我们的第一个孩子是在这一切情况中出生的,使一个住院医生的复杂家庭生活变得更加复杂。让大家很迷惑的是,我太太的下肢瘫痪了!没有一个医生可以搞明白这是怎么回事。

Thank God, a wonderful Chinese Church couple, the Chinns, invited us to stay with them for a month while my wife’s legs recovered. By living with them, we also learned a lot about normal American life, so we were doubly blessed. Otherwise, I cannot imagine how we survived.

感谢上帝,华人教会里有一对陈夫妇,很热情地邀请我们去他们家住一个月,等我妻子的腿康复起来。与他们一起生活的时候我们学会了不少美国生活的技巧,这么一来得到了双倍的祝福。否则的话,我很难想象我们怎么熬得过。

Only years later, we found out that the paralysis was likely a complication of spinal anesthesia for the delivery. Seems like that would be an easy diagnosis nowadays, but for some reason the doctors then did not understand what happened. They even thought, without precedence, that it was related to my wife’s inherited anemia! At least it was a reminder that even a normal modern delivery might go awry.

只有多年后我们才发现瘫痪可能是分娩时做脊椎麻醉的副作用。当今这本来是一个很简单的诊断,但那时候由某种原因医生都没有理解发生了什么。他们甚至认为是跟我太太的遗传性贫血有关,虽然没有这样的先例!最起码这提醒了我们,连一个正常的现代医疗进行的分娩也可以出问题。

Was my drastic weight loss to be expected? In the middle of all these disastrous events it seemed unsurprising that I was losing a lot of weight. In fact for my small size, losing 20 pounds was highly significant.

我体重剧减是正常的吗?在这一切灾难性的事情当中,我的体重一直在明显下降。其实,对一个像我一样个子小的人来说,瘦了二十斤是不可忽视的。

As I was trying to start an intravenous treatment for a premature baby, I found my hands shaking, making it impossible to insert the minute needle into the micro-vein. I went to see my internist: when I walked into his office, one look at me, and he said “thyrotoxicosis”, or overactive thyroid.

当我试着给一个早产儿开始输液,发现我的手在抖,使我没办法把小小的针头扎到微小的血管里。于是我去见我的内科医生——我走进他诊所的时候,只他看了我一眼就说“甲状腺毒症”,意思就是甲状腺功能过强

Sure enough, that it was. And it was  the best thing that happened, since he insisted on putting me in the hospital ward to gain weight. He insisted on giving me five meals a day and bed rest for two weeks to cure me.

果然如此,而且这发生在我身上恰恰是一件好事,因为大夫要求我住院增加体重。为了让我康复起来,还要求我必须一天吃五顿饭,卧床休息两个星期。

Photo 4: Michael Reese Hospital. My impressive, intense residency hospital. Welcome to Judaism, and American medicine, pediatrics and obstetrics. Where our first child was born. 照片四:令人印象深刻的,我做住院医生的繁忙迈克尔医院。欢迎我来到犹太教、美国医疗、儿科以及产科当中。我们第一个孩子出生的地方。

It’s not something I think we would do today, but it was fantastic for me since it was the only time I really rested during my 3 years of training. And I had rare time to read many neonatal medicine papers and books, which gave me great ideas for my budding clinical and research interests! Good came from bad… again.

我估计今天不会这样做,但那时候对我来说太棒了,因为那是我三年培训里的唯一一次真正休息。而且我还有难得的时间去阅读很多关于新生儿医疗的文件和书,在我对临床和研究的兴趣方面引发了一些很好的想法。坏事又一次生出了好结果来。

Is it safe to walk on a USA freeway off-ramp? One night, it was baking hot 115 degrees F at Redlands University in Southern California. My brother Freddy, six years younger than me, was trying to escape his college dorm heat by walking outdoors. Apparently he wandered accidentally onto a nearby exit ramp, past midnight.

在美国的高速公路匝道上走路安全吗?在一个南加州的夜晚,雷德兰大学宿舍里的温度达到了115华氏度。因为楼里太热,比我小六岁的弟弟弗雷迪出门,到外面走一走。午夜过后他好像不小心走到了附近的一个高速出口匝道上。

A car spun off from the San Bernardino freeway at 80 miles per hour, killing him instantly. I went over to the accident scene and even met the driver. It was one of the saddest moments of my life, and the saddest certainly for my parents.

有一辆车在圣贝纳迪诺高速公路上每小时八十英里的速度疾驰而来,一瞬间撞死他了。我赶到事故现场,还跟车司机见面。那是我人生里最难过的时刻之一,而对我父母来说一定是最伤心的。

My brother was an affectionate and sensitive musician. The family had great hopes for his artistic future. But in retrospect, when I was in high school in Hong Kong, it seemed every year we had a memorial for a school graduate who died in the US, often on its freeways. So there was always an implied danger somehow for students going overseas. Even without going to war! It was a stark reminder also that we are all mortal, even at age 22…

我弟弟是一个很热情温柔的音乐家,家人对他做艺术家的前景满怀期待。可现在回想起来,我在香港上高中的时候,好像似乎每年都会办一个在美国去世的毕业生的追思会,而且常常是在高速公路上去世的。所以对准备出国的学生来说,意识里总有某种潜在的危险感,即使不是要去打仗的!这鲜明提醒着,我们都要面对死亡,哪怕是二十二岁的年纪……

Now wasn’t that a tumultuous welcome? We certainly thought it was. Tumultuous Chicago, land of the Untouchables, shook us up. Face to face with the raw realities of real life. We were certainly not untouchable.

这是不是一场大风大浪的欢迎?我们确实这么认为。动荡的“不可触犯”之地芝加哥使我们很震撼。面对人生的残酷现实,我们并不是电影里那样“不可触摸”(untouchable,无动于衷)的。

Quite the contrary, we felt increasingly touched to respond better to life’s harshness, and to the lives of others. We became more “touchable”, more sensitive to God’s hovering over us, especially over our very long “honeymoon year”. Welcome to life in America!

相反,我们深受触动(touched)要笑对生活,友善待人。我们变得更加“可感动”(”touchable”),更加能感觉到天父的保佑,尤其在我们漫长的“蜜月年”里。欢迎来到美国的生活!

⦁ I was classified as an American citizen at birth, because of my Seattle born mother. But technically, because I was past the age I “should have returned,” when I landed in Chicago, I was considered an immigrant, a “green card holder”. But unknown to me, a change of law happened, and I was soon re-recognized and re-classified as citizen through birth again. In either case, however, I was draft eligible! See “Where are you from” on reggietales.org.

⦁ 我被归类为美国的出生公民,因为我母亲的出生地是西雅图。但严格来说,我抵达芝加哥的时候,我的身份是“持绿卡的”移民,因为我已经过了“应该回国”的年龄。不过,我还不了解情况之下,有关法律改了,又重新把我看待成出生公民了。无论如何,我都符合征兵条件!见reggietales.org的“你是哪里人”。

Coffee Reggiegram: what’s your response to wave on wave of challenging “welcomes”?
Do you ask “why me” , or do you keep getting stronger?

曾叔叔咖啡短短信:你对一波又一波来的艰难的“欢迎”回应如何?
你会问“为什么发生在我身上”,还是让自己越来越坚强?