The doctor's fine, deft fingers
worked with rapid, careful precision to close the gaping wound above my
8-month-old daughter's right eye.
Tawny yet clinically scrubbed to a
whiteness of nail and knuckle, there was something incredibly gentle in the
hands that stitched, in one continuous length of thread, a cut at least three
quarters of an inch long.
And the voice! It was quick
to the point, and business-like, yet softened by a reverence for life that even
little Julie seemed to sense. In a moment she had ceased her frenzied
struggle against the tight, blue canvas "papoose board" that
immobilized her in the emergency ward at Humana Davis North Hospital.
One, two, three, four, five
stitches. And the doctor was gone to the side of another accident victim
in another room.
Fascinated by the clean line of
stitching he had secured by just two knots, I chatted momentarily with a nurse.
"You'll hardly see a
scar," she said, handing a pineapple "Dum Dum" lollypop to my
baby and a list of wound care instructions to me. "You were lucky to have
had Dr. Amano."
I thought about that the other day,
when word reached me of the untimely death of Dr. Joe Amano. I
thought about what she'd said and about what I, myself, had come to know of the
kind-eyed doctor who had first treated me as a little girl with an earache at
the old Clearfield Clinic on Center Street.
Dr. Amano was a man who knew what
had to be done and did it. And if he couldn't help you, he'd find
someone who could. He checked things and then double-checked. He
always remembered you--asked about little things you'd thought he would have
forgotten.
He was a busy man, busy with
medical affiliations and offices, and yet you could still expect to see him at PTA
meetings, places like that He was honest and he cared
With stethoscope in hand, he served
northern Utah for more than 26 years, listening to the heartbeat of a clientele
who loved him.
Because he had been my parents'
doctor, my doctor, and my children's doctor, I felt a need to pay him
tribute. Yet with all my flourishes of pen, I could find no more
appropriate, more eloquent praise than the simple observation of one nurse who
knew his work: "You were lucky to have had Dr. Amano."
Note: I edited and posted
this old column to my blog upon reading that after so many years, Dr. Amano's
wife Norma had passed away. http://www.standard.net/Obituaries/2014/12/03/Norma-Hamatake-Amano
