Operating Room

The University of Maryland Medical Center hopes to win Army approval for a $2.5 million grant to help develop an "operating room of the future" for military hospitals. A Department of Defense appropriations bill signed recently by President Bush includes money to help the Army's Telemedicine and Advanced Research Center at Fort Detrick develop new operating room technology. The hospital wants to use part of this money to work with the Army on devices such as wireless communications systems, which surgeons could use to talk with doctors throughout the building, said Timothy Ganous, the medical center's technology planner.

I have followed Dr. Ben Carson's accomplishments over the years and watched as he has saved lives. In the quiet of an operating room, he saved children's lives with no regard of race, creed or gender. If it was any one of these people's children he saved, would they be barking about him right now ("Dr. Ben Carson steps down as speaker at Hopkins graduation," April 11)? Or would they stand up for him because he believes in something they don't? Dr. Carson says what he believes in. I never heard him say everyone else must believe in it also.

Stacey Gaskin's life is filled with scalpels, blood and antiseptic scrub. It also is rich in frilly dresses, painted nails and shiny patent leather shoes.The balancing act feels perfectly natural to Ms. Gaskin, an operating room assistant at Anne Arundel Medical Center and owner of a modeling school for low-income children in Annapolis.Yesterday, Ms. Gaskin left her blue scrubs at home and donned fancy clothes for her fifth annual Mother's Day fashion show, at the Annapolis Marriott Waterfront Hotel.

John Stewart Croucher, a retired hospital assistant engineer and World War II naval veteran, died of a stroke Tuesday at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Bel Air resident was 90. Born in Baltimore and raised on Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown, he was a graduate of the old Thomas A. Edison Vocational School on Howard Street. Many years later, he completed adult night school at City College. He also studied physics at what was then Essex Community College. Family members said Mr. Croucher was an accomplished machinist and worked at the Flynn & Emrich foundry on Holliday Street in downtown Baltimore in the early 1940s.

THE GUILTY verdict is in and the big fines have been imposed, but countless Americans still believe that a woman reporter's place is not in the locker room of a professional football team.When this furor first erupted, I received mounds of letters from men and women. The majority of them said that female sports reporters aren't really looking for news stories; they are shameless hussies who want to enter locker rooms to gaze upon the players' sex organs.At first, I disagreed, saying that the players could easily resolve the dispute by donning robes or wrapping towels around their waists.

Doris Graybill is probably too modest to admit it, but the Carroll County General Hospital employee is an unsung hero.Thanks to her, doctors and surgeons are assured that the operating room and surgicalinstruments they use to operate on patients and deliver babies safely are properly cleaned and sterilized."

Dr. James Russo, a retired anesthesiologist who established the department of anesthesiology at what is now Mercy Medical Center, died Saturday of heart failure at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 91. Dr. Russo, the son of an immigrant Italian grocer, was born and raised in Norristown, Pa. He was a 1935 graduate of Norristown High School and earned a bachelor's degree from Ursinus College in 1939. "He had a brother who was 18 years older who had gone to medical school, and he wanted to follow in his footsteps," said a daughter, Elena R. Trentalange of Glen Arm. After earning his medical degree in 1943 from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, he completed an internship at what is now Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Darby, Pa., and an internship in anesthesia at the Lahey Clinic in Boston.

Financially strapped Kirschner Medical Corp. received a lift from Maryland National Bank in the form of an agreement to restructure $17.3 million in debt, Kirschner said yesterday.Arrangements were also made to link a $12 million line of credit to inventory and receivables, according to Dr. C. Scott Harrison, chairman of the board, president and chief executive officer."Kirschner had a large amount of debt that was demand debt, which means that it could be called at any time," Dr. Harrison said.

There were many milestones in Dr. James D. Michelson's medical career: graduation from medical school, residency, that first operation, the day he got to pick the music. . . .The day he got to pick the music? Absolutely.In the hierarchical world of the operating room, the attending surgeon selects the music that his medical team listens to during surgery. This long-held perk has taken on even more significance in the wake of a study published last week that found surgeons work better when they work to music they love.

Dorothy LawtonTravel consultantDorothy Lawton, a travel consultant for a Millersville agency, died Friday of cancer at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was 70 and lived in Severna Park.She had worked at Accent Travel for about 20 years.The former Dorothy Schultz was a native of Latrobe, Pa., who came to the Baltimore area in 1949.A Mass of Christian burial was to be offered at 10 a.m. today at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, Ritchie Highway and Cypress Creek Road, Severna Park.

Marion Snyder Goldstein, a nurse who supervised operating rooms for decades at the now-closed Children's Hospital on Greenspring Avenue, died Tuesday at Stella Maris assisted living in Timonium. The longtime Baldwin resident was 92. The family was not provided a cause of death, though Mrs. Goldstein's physical and mental health had been in decline for several years, said daughter Deborah Drimer of Lutherville. Marion Snyder was born in Scranton, Pa., where she was raised and lived across the street from the Nay Aug Park zoo. She regularly visited Tilly the elephant there, often taking a banana as a snack for the pachyderm.

Leasing office space in this economy can be a challenge, especially in older buildings, but Taylor Fields is working on getting an edge: a super-fast fiber-optic broadband connection. "One of the first things [prospective tenants] ask is what kind of Internet service we have," said Fields, a Timonium-based commercial leasing agent for the James F. Knott Realty Corp. "They all want fast Internet. " As work begins on a fiber-optic broadband network that will connect every Maryland school, hospital, police station — and even more public buildings — businesses also want to get involved.

Elizabeth D. "Bette" Ermer, a registered nurse and former operating room supervisor, died Tuesday from complications of a brain tumor at Sinai Hospital. The Lochearn resident was 88. Elizabeth Davis, the daughter of a sheet metal worker and a registered nurse, was born and raised in Scranton, Pa. She was a 1938 graduate of Central High School and earned her nursing degree in 1943 from the Moses Taylor Hospital School of Nursing in Scranton. She moved to Baltimore during World War II after marrying Jack Morgan, who was an ensign in the Navy.

Kyra Sedgwick, Holly Hunter, Angela Lansbury - Baltimore native Jada Pinkett Smith is about to join some pretty exclusive company when her new weekly TV series, HawthoRNe, debuts Tuesday on TNT. Like those other actresses who made their reputations in feature films, she is coming to TV as both star and executive producer of a series designed to showcase her talents. The trade-off is a simple one: The TV network or cable channel gets a film-caliber star who will attract new viewers, and the star gets a steady paycheck and control of the material in which she appears.

Dr. James Russo, a retired anesthesiologist who established the department of anesthesiology at what is now Mercy Medical Center, died Saturday of heart failure at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 91. Dr. Russo, the son of an immigrant Italian grocer, was born and raised in Norristown, Pa. He was a 1935 graduate of Norristown High School and earned a bachelor's degree from Ursinus College in 1939. "He had a brother who was 18 years older who had gone to medical school, and he wanted to follow in his footsteps," said a daughter, Elena R. Trentalange of Glen Arm. After earning his medical degree in 1943 from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, he completed an internship at what is now Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Darby, Pa., and an internship in anesthesia at the Lahey Clinic in Boston.

Joan L. Wilder, a retired operating room nurse, died of multiple organ failure Friday at the Jewish Convalescent and Nursing Home in Pikesville. The former Towson resident was 85. Born Joan Leberman in Baltimore, she was a Forest Park High School graduate. She met her future husband, Dr. Earle M. Wilder, while she was a student at Sinai Hospital's School of Nursing. Dr. Wilder was her physiology and anatomy instructor. She had to receive permission from hospital authorities to be married in 1944 before she finished the program.

I have followed Dr. Ben Carson's accomplishments over the years and watched as he has saved lives. In the quiet of an operating room, he saved children's lives with no regard of race, creed or gender. If it was any one of these people's children he saved, would they be barking about him right now ("Dr. Ben Carson steps down as speaker at Hopkins graduation," April 11)? Or would they stand up for him because he believes in something they don't? Dr. Carson says what he believes in. I never heard him say everyone else must believe in it also.

There were no relatives in the hospital when the young man died, so Millie Brown and her co-workers in the operating room reached for a wallet in his pants to find some identification. The pants were wet, and so were the wallet and the thick stack of cash inside - blood money from the streets of Baltimore. Another young, African-American male lay on an operating table at Johns Hopkins Hospital, dead from five, maybe six bullets to the upper body. Many young men come, bleeding or unconscious, by ambulance to one of the greatest hospitals in the world, direct from the streets of East Baltimore - sometimes from only a few blocks away, where the paramedics and homicide detectives find them.

There were no relatives in the hospital when the young man died, so Millie Brown and her co-workers in the operating room reached for a wallet in his pants to find some identification. The pants were wet, and so were the wallet and the thick stack of cash inside - blood money from the streets of Baltimore. Another young, African-American male lay on an operating table at Johns Hopkins Hospital, dead from five, maybe six bullets to the upper body. Many young men come, bleeding or unconscious, by ambulance to one of the greatest hospitals in the world, direct from the streets of East Baltimore - sometimes from only a few blocks away, where the paramedics and homicide detectives find them.