Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: MONDAY, March 12, 1990 TAG: 9003122881 SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER SOUTHWEST BUREAU DATELINE: GALAX LENGTH: Long
Phipps, 65, witnessed four decades of change in health-care technologies and practices at three Galax hospitals.
About three months ago, however, Phipps showed up at Twin County's emergency room as a patient. Although there were no previous symptoms, he learned that he had lung cancer.
After all his years in operating rooms, it would seem only simple justice that the problem would be cleared up through surgery, but it was found to be inoperable.
Phipps is now battling the disease in other ways, but had to retire from his job. And his absence from the hospital is something everyone there seems to feel.
"I've been in the health care field 32 years and I've never come across anyone like this," said Kenneth Waddell, administrator at Twin County Community Hospital. Phipps trained himself to work in an operating room and went on to train others, Waddell said.
Waddell's father, the late Dr. R.L. Waddell, hired Phipps shortly after Phipps completed a hitch in the Army in 1947. The doctor had opened a hospital about two years earlier in what is now a Galax apartment building.
"I think that the same day I started, I went to the operating room with him. He was a surgeon and his wife was the anesthetist," Phipps said. "I started out to help him, oh, a couple of weeks. . . . I quit a couple of times, but they never let me get away.
"Every day he had surgery, I was with him. And at night," Phipps said. He estimated that there would be an average of 250 to 300 operations a year.
In the early days of his career, it was not unusual for Phipps to be on his feet for the best part of a day, as one long operation followed another.
"We have gone some long hours . . . 15, 16, without a bathroom break. This includes doctors, nurses and all," he said. "After a while, you learned how to prepare yourself. You didn't drink a lot of fluids and eat a lot."
The main anesthesia was "drop ether," he said, in which the liquid ether would be dropped into the hole on a patient's facial covering to keep the patient unconscious during the operation.
Phipps and the others in the operating room got used to the ether fumes over a period of time. But others working nearby in the building would sometimes get dizzy from the effects of the stuff.
When penicillin eventually made its way to Galax, Phipps said, people would take it for something as mild as a headache. It was only later that they learned of possible adverse reactions to the "wonder drug."
Some supplies were still hard to get after World War II. The hospital would even trade bed sheets with the nearby Bluemont Hotel at times. Phipps used to sterilize them in a pressure cooker, but the hospital got an autoclave for sterilization procedures while he was there.
Phipps made boxes for the various instruments that had to be sterilized in the device. He would patch and disinfect operating room gloves so they could be used again. It was not until the late 1960s, he said, "when we started coming up with a lot of disposable stuff."
When the doctor moved the hospital to another building on Painter Street in 1950, Phipps moved, too. And in late 1973, when Twin County replaced that hospital, Phipps moved one last time.
The sterile operating room packs and gowns are new for each operation today. Phipps used to have to put them in that old autoclave to sterilize them.
"And, believe it or not, it was just myself and one or two of the other girls that knew how to use it. It was an antique," he said. "But we kept getting parts for it and kept it going till we moved over here [to Twin County]."
Just like the days when Phipps would design his own sterilization boxes, Kenneth Waddell said, surgeons felt confident about Phipps' ability to solve any non-medical problem that comes up.
"That's why there have been surgeons that say, `If Louis isn't around, I don't want to operate,' " Waddell said. "I've had patients say, `If Louis isn't around, I don't want to be operated on.' "
Some of that feeling was conveyed to Phipps and his wife, Katherine - a dietary supervisor who retired from the hospital 1 1/2 years ago - when they walked into a hospital room to find it filled with their former co-workers.
"He taught us all many, many things," said operating room supervisor Shelby Luber. "He's not my co-worker; he's my friend."
Dr. Jim Griffeth told Phipps about a bench that would be placed in front of the China Gathering restaurant - part of the city's beautification effort - bearing a plaque with Phipps' name. That was done, Griffeth said, "so we can all go sit on Louis every now and then."
"I have never attended a retirement party where such large groups of diversified people turned out to pay their respects," Waddell said. "We had it in the largest room that we have in the hospital, but there were just as many people out in the corridor as there were in the room."
The outpouring of sentiment obviously meant a lot to Phipps.
"I can't talk much about that; I get a frog in my throat," he said. "So many friends and everything."
by CNB