The Hotel Doctor

A hotel guest phoned to ask when I’d arrive. “In about fifteen minutes.” On her initial call, I had told her I would arrive in an hour...

  I drove to Glendale to care for an elderly Argentine lady who had been vomiting. That can be a tricky problem in an old person, but she wa...

  It upsets me to collect a fee and then send a patient to a clinic or emergency room for care I can’t provide in a housecall. I try to anti...

  It was one a.m. as I drove Santa Monica Boulevard, but crowds packed the sidewalks in West Hollywood, lining up to hear the latest band. A...

Years ago I suffered a stomach virus, not a serious illness but unpleasant. I was resting after a night of vomiting when the Beverly G...

One mystery I’ve never solved is why patients worry about green bodily fluids. Guests with a cough tell me that they wouldn’t have...

Number one is urine infections in women, because I quickly make them go away. Handing over a packet of antibiotics, I assure someone who h...

“My flight leaves tonight” is a phrase I like to hear because it means the guest will return to the care of the family doctor. Until t...

The phone rang at 3:30 a.m. An airline pilot at the Costa Mesa Hilton needed a doctor, explained the caller. Could I go? That Hilto...

If a prescription gave you diarrhea or made you vomit, you would complain. But until well into the twentieth century, people looked on...

Everyone left town for the holiday including the local concierge doctors and at least one colleague, but plenty of travelers arrived, ...

A lady had been vomiting for three days. She had felt better that morning but then relapsed. She sounded weary. This was tricky. Sto...

I stopped chopping an onion when the phone rang. A young man at the Airport Hilton was vomiting. For a hotel doctor, a difficult c...

I once cared for a Fiji Airline flight attendant suffering stomach flu. These are miserable episodes of cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea...

Every day a thousand airline flight crew spend the night in a Los Angeles hotel. Sometimes they get sick and call their supervisor. If...

A guest at the Georgian hotel in Santa Monica wanted a housecall, said the desk clerk. She had a urine infection. That was good ne...

My phone rang as I walked into the gym. A guest at the Sunset Plaza wanted a doctor to “check out” her 9 year-old daughter who’d awoke...

If a prescription gave you diarrhea or made you vomit, you might complain. But until well into the twentieth century, the average Amer...

Two women at the Holiday Inn were ill. The mother suffered low abdominal pain with vomiting and diarrhea. It seemed like the usual sto...

I answered a call from a woman at a youth hostel suffering stomach virus. Wearing a bathrobe and looking off-color, she met me in ...