So Romania said goodbye to friends, family and to that beloved piano and embarked on a new career as a frontier physician.

Goodness knows, physicians were sorely needed on the western frontier!  In these early days, well-trained medical people were few and far between; supplies and sanitary facilities were almost non-existent and care for the sick and injured all too often meant amputations on the kitchen table and treatment with herbs, experimentation of quaint folk remedies. (Boiled toad was a common prescription for heart disease in the Old West, said writer Thomas Zeider in “Beehive History.” Owl soup was sometimes given for whooping cough, and the poor soul afflicted with diphtheria could expect an elixir of mashed snails.)