I left Overlake Internal Medicine in the Fall of 2009 and the new year has rung, it is now Jan 1, 2011. Over this period I have been through Seattle, Denver, all over Montana and Wyoming, multiple times in the Twin Cities, Chicago, Cleveland, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Gettysburg, Washington D.C., New York City, Amsterdam, Berlin, Zurich and Prague. I have written about all these places and from the medical side I have written on National Jewish Health and how it got its name, military trauma, the devolution of evolution, sarcoidosis, high altitude physiology, prehistoric TB, leprosy and the Bible, the cost and politics of medicine while the legislature was trying to pass Obamas Health Bill, how chickens could be used as barter for health care as proposed by Sue Lowden-Senate candidate from Nevada, medical interviews I have suffered through in my career, nurse-doctor collaboration and other ethics issues while studying at the Penn Center for Bioethics, and how we could die from a broken heart. Other horsing-around topics have included Fourth of July in Billings, MT, living near the Target Parking lot, blizzards in Philadelphia, geographic illiteracy in the US, and how a Boeing engineer was killed by getting "too close" to a horse in Enumclaw, WA.
On the more serious side, my Mom died within the last last month and I will miss her very much. She raised five kids, four daughters and a son, with precision and most often grace, but she was in her 80s and suffering from recurrent lymphoma so her death was somewhat of a blessing. She was uncomfortable both physically and emotionally and her passing relieved her of that burden. God bless her. She was a bright woman with many interests and she taught all of us many important lessons in life, not the least of which was to enjoy reading. She read often and her children have been readers and have pursued strong careers in law enforcement, aviation, medicine, business, and communications and literature. She was a doctors wife with a life of her own, more like a Hillary Clinton first lady than many other first ladies of the White House. She had a career in the 1950s in home economics where she worked for General Mills, Economics Laboratories (now Ecolabs) and she had a cooking show for a time on Times Square in New York. I used to tell friends that she was Betty Crocker and she was. Her first husband died tragically in a plane crash while flying with the Air Force just one week into their marriage. She loved travel and she was always up for a visit where ever her kids lived or travelled. Although she had her trying moments, as we all do, I will miss her and I loved her as I loved my father. May they both rest in peace.
I have felt lucky over the past year or so since I have had the means and ability to pursue some interests outside of a career in pulmonary and critical care medicine and I would recommend time like this to anyone, although I acknowledge that without kids and by having a doctors salary I lie outside the norm, leaving me privileged. In addition to some scholastic interests I have also been able to rekindle relationships with family and friends that I would not have been able to do without the freedom of time. I have gone to baseball games, read books, and laughed a ton with those that I have not seen enough of in the past thirteen years, since getting into practice, and it has been priceless. I acquired a cat, Peanut Butter, from my friend Mary and her daughter Ollie and in addition was able to see Ollie off to school at the University of Chicago. Since I don't have kids of my own I have enjoyed moments with Ollie and Mary that I would never have been able to enjoy working 60-100 hours a week in a practice. Indeed, I even got to give a lecture at Ollie's high school. I also got to see my niece and nephew, Alice and Andrew, in Atlanta as well as in the Twin Cities. They are young and goofy in a great way. Again, over thirteen years I felt that I was losing touch with family. I have played hockey with the Quinlan's, spent a whole lot of time with Tom and Lily, my cousin and his wife, and my retired Army buddy Bruce, and master cabinet maker, has been up for travel at the drop of a hat. We have joked about how we are perceived as a gay couple, far from reality, not that there's anything wrong with it...And my friend John came to visit me in Philadelphia where we basically goofed around like we used to as teenagers working at Fort Snelling. God what a time. I wouldn't have given this up for the world.
But it's now time to get back to work. I am looking forward to my new position in Denver. The work has more trauma and generally more critical care than my job in Seattle. This is exciting to me, and I will work less but be paid more, a proposition that only a fool would hesitate to embrace. Also I hope to continue projects that I started at National Jewish and the Penn Center. I hope to get some data into publication on cavitary mycobacterial disease as well as well as on some subjects of bioethics which I have grown to be quite attracted to. A few books on ethics and time spent at the Penn Center have really piqued my interest. But who knows, as long as I'm doing pulmonary and critical care clinical work and having enough time to enjoy life I think I'll be happy. The academic stuff would be icing on the cake and my expectations are low since I have always kind of sucked at academic medicine.
I wrote this blog because I wanted a way to record what I did and thought over the past year and I wanted to get more experience with writing. As they say the best way to become a good writer is to write, so that's what I have done. In the future I will probably continue to write on topics that come into my head but these topics may be less directed around travel or medicine. I like the free-form aspect of writing a blog, so the future will tell if I develop any pattern or if I remain a hack. Thanks to the few of you that have been following, I have appreciated your feedback and compliments.
