Letter: Recalling a good Madera doctor
To the caller who said he bet I didn’t know where John Barnett lived: My reply is, “No, I haven’t the froggiest idea,” but I do remember Dr. Ransom’s house.
I especially remember his office that was upstairs on Yosemite Avenue and D. Street. It was there that I started at a high, mahogany, display case that had glass doors and held two specimens floating in jars. Those specimens, I was told, were tails that had been cut off of humans. I was around 6 years old when I beheld that spectacle, but every time I went to his office my eyes were fixed on that display case and those tails floating in those two jars.
When Bill Coate mentioned Dr. Ransom in his history of Madera stories, it brought back to me memories of how important that doctor was to our family.
In 1936, my Aunt Betty Myers came down with diphtheria. There was nowhere to go but the county hospital for treatment. Betty was in bad shape. Infection from the disease had eaten away much of her larynx, and even her windpipe. The interns and county doctors weren’t very wise and they wound up butchering the job of cutting out the infection; besides it was a hard place to treat. Her throat and neck were messed up. Proud flesh was growing in the wound and hanging all over the outside of her neck.
She was around 15 at the time, and this disaster meant she would never be able to sing again, and she loved to sing.
At one point in Betty’s struggle to live, the county doctors closed up the hole (stoma) in her neck, but then she could breath in but not out. A doctor from Dearborn Hospital sped out to the county hospital and took out the stitches. Betty said a sound came out of the stoma like a hissing sound when you press a valve stem on a tire. Her lungs were starting to tear and explode. That was over a mile drive the doctor took to save her life.
Next, grandmother took Betty to see Dr. Ransom. When he saw the condition her throat was in and all the proud flesh that was hanging on her neck, he began to curse those county doctors and called them a bunch of butchers.
Then, he cleaned the proud flesh out of her wound and off of her neck and made her an appointment with a specialist named Dr. Morrison and from that time on, the University of California at Berkeley’s doctors in training called my Aunt Betty “Dr. Morrison’s pet.” Only he would take care of her. She was his special case.
In, all she had around 27 operations on her throat and windpipe. Much of it was all re-construction. It was Dr. Ransom that was our family hero. If it hadn’t been for him, Betty wouldn’t have lived to learn to play the guitar or piano, and finally get enough of her voice back to stand behind a pulpit and preach.
She married a Hoopa Indian who was a Pentecostal preacher and had his own church on the Hoopa reservation. That Pentecostal preacher, Frank Horn, got my son-in-law and daughter and son into the ministry and into the Willow Creek Assembly of God Church, and later the Assembly of God Hoopa Church. He got them launched.
But these series of events wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for Dr. Ransom, who helped Betty.
What really brought things all together was Grandma Myers, who was a prayer warrior and bombarded heaven night and day for her family, and especially for her daughter Betty. God gave her the knowledge to get in touch with the right doctor, Dr. Ransom, who then got Betty into the university hospital and under the care of Dr. Morrison.
When you know how to get in touch with God. He can get you in touch with the person or persons that can help you. You see, God works through people, and God worked through Dr. Ransom to create a miracle.
Our God is an awesome God.
Anyce Ruth Malone Hutchison,
Madera
