On the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend in 1958 in Schurz, NV, I tripped, fell and shattered my knee cap.  The orthopedist removed much of the bone fragments and screwed two pieces together to give me a functioning kneecap.  He warned me this would probably be good for two or three years at most.  Eventually I need removal of the remaining knee cap 20 years later.

After the surgery in 1958 I was in a long leg cast and mostly confined to bed for 10 days.  

I returned to Schurz and resumed clinical and administrative duties.

I began to have symptoms of urinary frequency and extreme urgency and some back pain.  One day it became evident I had formed a kidney stone which was now trying to pass.  I was taken to Reno to the then Washoe County Hospital and admitted for pain management as the stone passed and to be evaluated for kidney damage.

An Intravenous Pyelogram (IVP) was performed, a medication is injected into the vein by a physician because the drug has to be monitored closely.  I was lying on the table trying not to writhe from the pain of my stone passing and not paying much attention to my surroundings as the radiologist was injecting the contrast material.

Suddenly I realized he was talking to me.  “Who are you? What’s your name again?  Where do I know you from?  I know I know you.”

We went through our biographies and finally realized he had been a resident in radiology at UTMB Galveston when I was a senior medical student at the same establishment at the same time and he had read some x-rays with me.

That had occurred some 1968 miles away and 3 years previously.  I would say he had a good memory.