1946
After having given all these details about me and Hedy and our children, I find it necessary to give also some details about Lisa and Paul. I had mentioned that they both had settled in Manhattan, also that they both had gotten jobs and had started to work. Once, in 1945, shortly after their arrival, Lisa surprised me with the question, whether she could have a child. It was difficult for me to answer her, as I knew her age. She was born in 1904, so she was 41 years old. I hesitated and told her that I would not like to take the responsibility, and that I would ask the chief obstetrician in the Williamsburg Maternity Hospital, where I worked, to give his opinion. That I did and he answered: “Tell her to go ahead”. That I told Lisa. I knew that she had a miscarriage of an early pregnancy about 3 months before, which she ascribed to working on a certain machine, where she had to press hard with one foot. She soon became pregnant again. I recommended her to a friend, Dr. Paul Schneider, a very experienced obstetrician from Vienna, and she was then under his care. For the delivery, she was admitted to the Williamsburg Maternity Hospital, when the labor pains started. But the pains were very mild and she made slow progress. Dr. Schneider was very conservative and saw no need to do something. She was not uncomfortable, could read a book and had no sharp pains at all. On the 4th day of labor.-it was the 7th of March, 1946 – he took her into the delivery room, when she was almost ready. He finally applied forceps and completed the delivery. But shortly afterwards, an enormous hemorrhage set in, the kind of which I had never seen before. I shouted for a bottle of serum, which was brought within seconds, I found and pierced right away a vein on the arm and the flow of serum started at a rather fast rate. Before that, she was pale and almost pulseless. Dr. Schneider massaged the uterus, injected some Pituitrin into the uterus wall, and soon the hemorrhage stopped. The child, Ginnie, did not need any resuscitation, but did not cry loud, as other children usually do. Lisa, who has had for a short time ether anesthesia, soon was fully awake and happy that everything was over. I can say, without bragging, that I had saved her life, by acting fast and injecting the serum right away, when the severe hemorrhage had started. She was already in shock and any delay could have been fatal.
The big surprise came the next day, when the pediatrician, Dr. Smith, after having examined the child, called me and told me that the child had an abnormal heart. Unnecessary to say that I was extremely unhappy about it. But I decided to keep it as a secret to myself, asked also Dr. Schneider not to say anything about it to Lisa. I kept the secret for 1 ½ years to myself. I saw that she was a so-called blue baby, that she was slow in sitting up, in talking, in starting to walk. But she was a beautiful child, friendly, laughing, and did not cry much. Once I had to call a friend, Dr. Loewy, to their apartment to cut the very short frenulum under her tongue. Ginnie was then already a few months old. He examined her, of course, was a very well known pediatrician, also from Vienna, but was informed before by me about her heart, and did not say anything about it. Later, in the street, we spoke about it. Just at that time, heart operations were being performed at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. It was the now famous Dr. Helen Taussig, who first tried these operations. She herself did not operate, but she had there an excellent surgeon, Dr. Blalock, who performed the first heart operations. These were closures of a patent ductus Botalli. Later, they operated on more serious heart defects. That was what I discussed with Dr. Loewy and we both expressed the hope that later on Ginnie would perhaps also be helped by surgery. As time went on, it became more and more apparent to Lisa and Paul that there was something wrong with Ginnie. She had difficulties to walk, used to squat all the time after a few steps. Lisa had enormous difficulties carrying herself up four flights of stairs, and especially when she had gone shopping, carrying at the same time also the things she had bought.
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