Heritage Snapshot Part 311

In November, Harold Shryock parked the company truck behind the bakery, handed in his Breadman uniform, said goodbye to his co-workers, and drove home. Soon thereafter, in high spirits and filled with renewed hopes, he and his bride Daisy packed their belongings and steered their vehicle south for the long trip back to Loma Linda. Harold had made his choice. This time around, he worked part time as a technician in both the anatomy and chemistry departments while Daisy served part-time as a registered nurse at the new Loma Linda Sanitarium and Hospital. He completed his sophomore year at CME at the end of May 1930 and continued his technician job throughout the summer. But instead of the Shryocks then moving to Los Angeles for his clinical education, Harold found himself experiencing yet another detour. After repeated communications, Harold began a year of teaching at Pacific Union College. He admitted that he was looking forward to being a teacher where he'd invested happy years as a student and would enjoy spending more time in the beautiful Napa Valley. The unexpected seemed to transform Harold's every step during his early years—from maintenance man, laboratory animal technician, truck driver, and medical student to invalid; then medical student to chemistry teacher, suitor, fiancé, husband, and Breadman; and now medical student. For the third time! But most unexpected—well, not entirely, was to learn that his wife was expecting. Patricia Helen Shryock arrived on September 14, 1931, in perfect condition.  Harold's one-year absence from medical school proved to be of no consequence to his relationships. His new classmates readily accepted and welcomed him. In early March 1932, Daisy told her husband that their little family was about to grow again. On December 9, 1932, Edwin Forrest Shryock arrived red-faced and loud.  Harold Shryock graduated from the College of Medical Evangelists on June 18, 1933. The ceremonies took place in the Loma Linda Bowl, an outdoor amphitheater on the north slope of sanitarium hill. He stood number eight in scholastic achievements in his class of 93. As soon as the graduation was over, he was eager to take the next step in his career; an internship in Loma Linda.  During his internship, Shryock administered anesthesia at the Loma Linda Sanitarium and Hospital and assisted in surgery. While on that particular job, one day he suffered a great shock. A scream shattered the afternoon stillness at the Loma Linda Sanitarium and Hospital as the young Harold Shryock flew uncontrollably backward through the air. As his body crashed to the floor, it seemed as though all of the events of his life had just passed through his consciousness.  His youth had been a series of incredible twists and turns, false starts, unexplained illnesses, and agonizing delays. Seven years after entering medical school, he'd finally arrived at the threshold of becoming a licensed physician and had recently discovered the joys and fulfillment of being a loving husband and proud father. In anticipation of following in his dad’s footsteps, he was preparing for an academic career and believed his life to be right on track. Now, lying on a sterile hospital floor, he looked up into anxious faces with his legs burned on his thighs.  Hospital personnel helped the young physician to a treatment table in the next-door hydrotherapy department and tried to make him comfortable. There he rested for half an hour, contemplating his fate and hoping that he'd be able to return that evening to his family. Earlier, while treating a young girl with a broken arm, Thomas I. Zirkle, M.D. had been using a fluoroscope to visualize the bone as he manipulated it into place. Harold, following procedure, stood at the girl's head using the standard ether-drip method to administer anesthesia. He leaned forward in the darkened room to monitor the drops as they fell into the patient's mask.  When he did so, his head accidentally touched the X-ray tube. With thighs already in contact with the metal frame of the examination table, his movement closed an electrical circuit. Instantly, a current of high-voltage electricity coursed through his forehead, body, and thighs. Muscles throughout his body contracted fiercely. The strong muscles in his back tightened instantly, throwing him away from the X-ray machine as the current elicited the involuntarily scream that was heard throughout the building. Harold later learned that the possibility of a fatal outcome from such an electric shock depended on the particular phase of the victim's heart action at the instant the current strikes. Had he made contact with the tube a split second sooner or later, he would have been killed.