Cellular Therapy : Businessman Takes Phone, Fax and Computer to Hospital Room

The high-tech equipment arranged around Gary Becker’s hospital bed blinked, beeped and buzzed the other day after doctors wheeled him out of surgery.

These machines weren’t hooked up to Becker, though. They were pumping lifeblood into his company.

The Agoura businessman brought in a computer, modem, beeper, fax machine and cellular telephone after he checked into a Van Nuys hospital to be treated for injuries from a motorcycle accident.

For the last week, Becker, 39, has run his tiny aerospace parts supply firm from Room 646 of Valley Presbyterian Hospital.

While doctors keep a watchful eye on his medical charts, Becker has kept tabs on his inventory, accounts receivable and shipping orders.

There’s good reason for such careful scrutiny on both counts.

After two operations, surgeons were forced Thursday to amputate a portion of one badly infected finger.

But after five years of struggling in the cutthroat wholesale electronics field, Becker was determined to keep his three-employee J R Industries of Westlake Village healthy.

Becker first thought the injury to his right-hand ring finger was minor after he crashed his dirt bike on an outing two weeks ago in Newbury Park. Even after infection set in and stitches seemed to fail, Becker figured he would only be off work for a day or so.

When doctors in Van Nuys told him he faced a hospital stay, he was determined not to take it lying down.

“I actually didn’t ask if I could bring the computer and other stuff in. I just had my company driver bring it over,” he said.

When he jokingly asked nurses if “anybody around here uses pacemakers--I’m about to plug in,” they called hospital technicians to come look at the unusual gear.

“I almost fell over when I saw it. I don’t know how he snuck it past me,” nurse Phyllis Weinstein said with a laugh.

Nurse Rubbie Bullock--who entered the medical field after aerospace layoffs in 1989 eliminated her job as a Northrop B-2 bomber assembly-line worker--said she understood Becker’s motivation.

“In that business, you’ve got to keep up,” Bullock said.

Doctors quickly decided the equipment was good medicine for Becker. Besides keeping his mind off his injuries, it was also making him exercise by getting in and out of bed to switch the phone line between the computer modem, the fax machine and his hospital room telephone handset, orthopedic surgeon David Auerbach said Friday.

Soon, Becker devised a way to reserve his room’s phone line for computer and fax use while using his beeper and cellular telephone to handle incoming calls.

He also scrounged up an extension phone cable in case he needed to string it into the room next door and barter with fellow patients for the right to tap into their telephone outlet.

Hospital officials were surprised by his resourcefulness. “We want to make patients feel at home,” said Valley Presbyterian Vice President Hal Wurtzel. “But we’ve never had a situation like this before.”

Becker, a father of two who also volunteers as a Los Angeles Police Department reserve officer in the west San Fernando Valley, said his hospital stay has taught him a few things.

“I guess I’m a workaholic. I apologized to my wife, Kathy, about shortchanging the family in the past on vacations,” he said. “This has proved to me that me that I could probably work from a beach in the Bahamas. . . . I’m going to get a laptop computer.”

Becker said he expects to be released from the hospital Monday. But if he isn’t, he knows what’s next.

“I’m going to get a dedicated phone line in here for the fax,” he said. “And a file cabinet.”