RETURN, RECOVERY, RE-ENTRY
FATHER’S DAY AND FLIGHTS FROM DENVER TO DERWOOD
WITH HOLY CROSS HOSPITAL GRAND ROUNDS
JUNE 17—21, 2001
Happy Summer Solstice! This is the longest day of the year, “and the livin’ (should be ) easy.” If fish aren’t exactly jumping, a lot of other activities are, many of them relating to a dense flurry of far-flung travels and activities all over the world.
After the Finish Line at the Big Horn Ultra, we all staggered off to Four Pines for a shower and a rather welcome crash into bed. It is a good thing we were all still about four to six liters behind in our hydration (six pounds down at Gene Moore’s weigh in), since, despite another liter of Gatorade and a beer, I knew that if I had to get up at night, it would take quite a long time to mobilize. We all get a small short sample of what life must be like for some people all the time.
We creaked around at the special breakfast at Four Pines, and enjoyed a time of comparing notes and packing up for the trip into Sheridan for the Awards Festival of the run and the long ride back toward Denver with a stop in Long View, where we would be celebrating the Father’s Day that I am only reminded of in Colorado. For each of the last years, it has been with Sarah Moore’s father, and in the past year he had died after our last visit, when I was still in Fairbanks, AK in August. So, this will be the first Father’s Day without father for Sarah, but both of Gene and Sarah’s sons will be there, and Jeff, Gene and I will be trying to make it there by early afternoon
When we drove up, they were calling my name to come forward to get a certificate (the first time for this event this year) and I got the Finisher’s Shorts as well as the promised picture of me and “Jennifer” the cowgirl I had proposed to at Upper Sheep Creek last year when I was barely conscious of getting through the last cutoff time check station. We compared notes and a number of my friends had got first in age group prizes, like Laurie Medina, who was first in the 35 year-old women category. I was surprised to find out that I also got a prize, since there were no finishers older than I, although a couple had started. Gene got his Finisher’s shorts, and we all sang Happy Birthday to him.
We drove down through Wyoming to Colorado, listening to my book on tape Nimitz Class, and we watched antelope as we rode through thesurprisingly green prairie. We had a super grille of steak and all the fixings on the porch with Long Peak—the crown of Colorado behind the house. We transferred over all the stuff I needed for the ride home in the new Durango (Hunter’s high school graduation present—along with another from his Uncle Harvey—a 12 gauge pump shotgun, about which his mother is somewhat alarmed and opposed.) We talked a bit upon arrival in Denver, and I called an answering machine in place of someone I thought might be able to make a confirmed reservation for the Super Shuttle into the DIA on Monday morning.
Monday morning, we said our farewells, and I got through at last to the Shuttle people, and an Afghani driver came over to pick me up. He was surprised that I knew where he came from and that I knew something about the Taliban. His whole clan is here, living not a lot differently than they do in Afghanistan. His wife wears the chador and is not allowed out of the house except with him, and certainly not to work. We had a long talk about Islam versus the culture, and he and I parted with a few good words at DIA as I moved stiffly over to the check-in. I got to the lobby where I first met—by accident, Michael Eiffling-the Student of the Year at Colorado who had just been with me in Dharamsala. I then met by plan, Rich Reinert, who showed me his new Swarovksi binoculars. I told him of my conundrum in having signed up for the Hartford Connecticut Oct 13 marathon, and then learning that I was off elk hunting that same week including the days directly from the New Orleans ACS and on to DIA. I had mailed in my desert big horn ram and Coues deer rifle hunt permits to AZ, so we may still be coming to do some late fall hunting in the AZ drawing for which I have a license now.
I arrived in BWI and ransomed the Bronco and drove to the grocery store to get staples for Derwood, and unpacked. I stayed home on Tuesday, getting over to Holy Cross Hospital in time to give their Grand Rounds, the reason I ha to change my travel schedule top return a day earlier. I had received a call from a fellow named Kevin Bergman, a GWU freshman medical student who begged me to be included in the Ladakh trip about which he had just heard, so I said OK. That means now that from a maximum of 12 students for me to supervise in every clinical transaction, they have doubled to 24, for which I will be spread very thin. I had learned that the trip to Kamchatka would be no earlier than August 18, so I will return from Delhi after all, and I got the Ladakh schedule confirmed with an extension for me into August 6 for the Lingshed clinics.
Kevin Bergman I had encouraged to come to the Holy Cross Grand Rounds, and he did to meet me. Who should be there on her rotation but Elizabeth Yellen, who had been on the very Ladakh trip that Kevin has just signed into so that they could compare notes. I also have been working on getting Elizabeth to Ethiopia for her senior elective.
The chief medical resident came to me after the Grand Rounds and said that this was so inspiring that she wants me to come back to talk to the medicine residents, pleading with me since she said they have no money to pay any speaker’s expenses. I believe that is my usual clientele!
I have been working diligently on meshing the long international trips later in Jan/Feb 2002 to possibly Goa, then Malawi, South Africa and on to Mindanao, Philippines. (see Jun-C-10) I have spent more time on the distant future, and less on the pressing present. One of the pressing this that did happen is that Kurt called to tell me that the freelance video photojournalist Roger Herr had called and is excited about prospects to get underway soon and accompany me to the Himalayas. I have told him that the Ladakh trip would be ideal, and if not that, the Spiti trip. (See attached series) I hope he can go. But Kurt’s much bigger news, around which he was trying to organize his life, is that Julie had just had a mastectomy with a bad and dreaded breast cancer, and they had had a long talk about such matters as planning funerals and child care. The last word was that she has a negative specimen with negative nodes and positive receptors, and although she will now go on to chemotherapy, the outlook is much better than the earlier very bad news.