JUL-B-3
A JOURNEY OF A
THOUSAND MILES, SAID CHAIRMAN MAO,
BEGINS WITH THE
FIRST STEP:
BUT THIS ONE IS
THIRTY TIMES THAT, MISTER CHAIRMAN,
AND BEGINS WITH
STAGGERING STUMBLES
July 17, 2002
OK, I am off and running!
IS REFRESHED FROM
MY CONTACT AGAIN WITH JOE MURRAY,
BOTH NOBLE AND
NOBEL!
A really wonderful letter arrived just before my takeoff. With the death of my former surgical chief, Francis D. Moore, I wondered if my advisor at Harvard, Joseph E. Murray was still living. I had been closely associated with him during my Brigham residency as I was involved in the dawn of transplantation, and he was the one who had transplanted the first human kidney. But he was also very interested in facial reconstruction of severely deformed kids, and we had written articles on this subject together with the results of his imaginative reconstruction of the kids with midfacial deformities that were congenital.
When I moved down to NIH, there was a very rough period then when Sally left and I was trying to stabilize what family was left. Joe Murray heard about it and got in his car, and drove down to Bethesda. At that time there was a pool in front of Building 10, the NIH Clinical Center, from the “Biblical pool of Bethesda.” We walked around it and he sat with me and said he would come any time I needed him, and he was looking forward to my return to Harvard, which he would get ready for me when I was finished at NIH.
When I went to San Francisco the next year to the ACS Clinical Congress, I stayed in the St. Francis Hotel, and so did he. In the morning, I walked into the lobby over a tangle of cables and I saw that there were TV trucks with their high gain antennas extended, all around the hotel. I asked my colleague from the Brigham transplant service Joe Alexander whom I had met in the lobby (who had subsequently gone on to be the chief of surgery at Martin Luther King Hospital in Watts, Los Angeles) “what is this all about?”
“Haven’t you heard? Your advisor Joe Murray just received the call this morning that he is being awarded the Nobel Prize for pioneering organ transplantation!”
So, I had made it to several Nobel Prize Award ceremonies, one at NIH and one in the Brigham in his honor, and at each of these he was very kind and gracious and most interested in what had been happening to me. I thought about this, and having heard no word about him, decided I would write a letter thanking him for all he had done for me, and sent it to the Harvard Medical School’s Countway Library, which had been the address of Francis Moore in his retirement, so I thought I would try the same address.
I opened my mail and found a letter from Joseph E. Murray, who is residing in Edgarton Massachusetts, and he says nice things in the typescript, wishing he could join me on some of my medical missions, “but reality intervenes.” But then he appended a handwritten note that said that getting to know me was one of the rewards of a life of surgery that had brought us together.
I have frequently had such retrospective appreciations for those who were my mentors (I wonder how many out there now consider me to be their mentor from the earlier generation?) and have occasionally thought I would send them a note across the decades. On at least one occasion I did so, to Francis D. Moore, who had written the introduction to my first book. I had written a couple such letters of appreciation to Denis Burkitt, after I had visited him at his home over two weekends in the Cotswold four years apart, and we were still writing another manuscript together, when both the manuscript, my last letter of appreciation and an obituary notice appeared in the same mailing.
I later did so again to Paul Adkins in the last weeks of his life, and then, more recently to Paul Shorb. There have been thoughts of others, whom I had shaken off the impulse saying, “I doubt they are even alive.” And here, I fired a shot into the unknown on behalf of a genuine great man, and he not only received it, but also added that Mrs. Murray remembered me (they had invited me to their home for dinner when I was just a surgical pup) and joined him in wishing me well. It is not just because he has a “capital “N” pin” in his lapel (the Nobel Laureate medal) that makes him a great man!
TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE GLOBE
FOR A STRING OF
MEDICAL MISSIONS
SPLICED BY FURTHER
ADVENTURE
I am aboard L/H 419---a flight so much a regular “commuter” of mine that the gate agents recognize me and greet me by name at check-in. I have had a long-standing relationship with the head of L/H operations at IAD, whose name is Zita-Coleman, a hyphenated example of hybridity, who had whisked me into Business Class along with my two GWU students, neither of whom had been abroad before, on my last arrival. I got to IAD three hours early, and immediately went looking for her to announce that I was here, again, with four boxes of medicines, but no personal baggage, so that if she could kindly check them through without surcharge, I would await whatever seating arrangements she could make for me. No such luck. It was said “She is out on the ramp today” which meant that I would have to go back to the very long queue and wait my turn at check-in into economy class. I did. This meant that I was in the line for more than the two and half hours that I had as a cushion for my early arrival. I did not even have time to make a phone call—which is just as well since I arrived at the first row of phones and tired to make a credit card call when I was shuffled off by the new airport security force who declared that this space would be needed for random security searches of the flying public they would select for the boarding of the other plane that was leaving from the gates where the phones were.
I then went to the Lufthansa Gate 2 and found a row of fewer phones, each of which rejected my credit cards, saying either that their was an “insert error” or that it was an invalid cared—though each work well for almost all other purposes. So, the short story on the IAD phones is the same as the answer to the question about the do-it-all digital handheld apparatus now on the market: they claim to do it all—and do none of it, and when they do it they will do just one thing and not as well as the less integrated systems already in use. “You can’t get there from here” with very knowledgeable automated voices on the phones answering that there can be no connection since your card is invalid--etc. I know they say that only since they do not have a wide repertoire of responses to any number of glitches, so that every problem becomes the “nail “ in their automated responses. Like the “This machine had performed an illegal maneuver and will immediately be shut down” that my desktop computer flashes at me several times a day when it is confused. Rather than saying it is not up to the task at hand, it simply has recourse to the very bombastic statements about “:Illegal Procedure” for which I am to be penalized. It does not seem as though the integrated systems I had envisioned before taking off on this trip will be a reality that is functional –despite advertisements to the contrary—for the next decade. So, I will struggle along in the low-tech environment in which I have at least accommodated the shortcomings of both the machinery and programs as well as my own learning curve, recognizing that I will never have the state of the art, much less be ahead of it. So, I will use what I know to date, and try to incorporate the new when each gets out of prototype for the functions of tomorrow.
I had cleared the refrigerator and emptied the trash on leaving home, so that I had a clear morning. I knew that I would not be able to start up on the required full dress thesis proposal immediately upon return nor in transit, in remote environments, out of touch with the all important libraries for generating any original ideas I might have and trying to find someone in the [past who had said something like it to footnote them as the credit for the ideas of theirs I had never encountered, so I worked hard at generating at least an outline of the Thesis Proposal which should be available by the September 5 meeting, now called an informal gathering to discuss emphases of the proposal which will have to be formally defended by the next session of the same committee. I was eager that they get together before a final thesis proposal was presented to them, since the first two times this was tried, the members spent most of their time explaining why they were not on the committee at all, let alone leaders of it, and none had read my proposal nor ever would. So, I did not plan to work hard at generating another proposal that no one would read. So, there will be a meeting on September 5 to assure members of the committee that they are indeed ON the committee, and that at that time we can schedule the tricky part---a date at which all can appear for the formal defense of the thesis proposal. In the handbook issued to students, it says this is a tentative stage, which does not have to be formal, opening only for discussion the topic that is going to be addressed with the help of the committee members. Now I hear that the ten page limits the handbook sets is not to be governing the proposal but that the last proposal that went through had at least thirty pages of text without including the 15 pages of bibliography. So the rules that were printed in the graduate student handbook about this being an informal discussion about the general them limited to ten pages (I had even cribbed by making this double spaced) are no longer applicable. Since I am trying to simply get through this part of the hazing process and mentioned the term I had used of going through the hoops inserting all the learned lumber of pedantry as the thing required to show that I have never had an original thought in my life, but all that I am and ever hope to be comes from “conversation with the texts of post-modernism theory” with which I fundamentally disagree in the first instance, so I will sing the songs in the same clichés the previous successful candidates did to move on to get their jobs, which were dependent on this new advanced degree. It is hardly appropriate for me to point out to the new committee member that the single theme of most of the prior thesis proposals has been a litany of the “queer theory” in post-modern victimization they are trying to deconstruct. But, as I typed up this morning, I can parrot back what is expected of me as well as anyone else in order to move on to something substantive to say about an issue (in common with anyone else who has ever written a graduate PhD thesis) know more about than anyone who is supposed to read it. So, I am ready to say what is expected of me, based on what has already been written and cited often in the litany of the post-modern pantheon, leaning heavily on such scurrio0ous pivotal figures as Michel Foucault, etc.
I have been cautioned not to be negative, but to go through the motions as that which is expected of me and any other graduate student. They are presumably selected on the basis of their independent creativity, and then forced to fit into a mold of a discipline they must parrot, including even this Human Sciences “Inter-Disciplinary
Scholarship” in which no one present has any interest or appreciation for anyone else’s’ scholarship or methods. So, I must push my interdisciplinary Renaissance approach into the au courant post-modern system of deconstructive thought—even though the sun is setting on the “po-mo” theory. End of rant number N in a series.
Now on with what I can do, as I am crossing the Canadian Maritime provinces and headed off across the broad Atlantic on the first small step in going around the world to get to twelve and a half time zones away to start the firs of two major treks into Himalayan India. I am alone, which presumably means unfettered, and with this I liberty I should be able to move faster and more freely. That is not necessarily a blessing, as it takes place against the backdrop of a quite different trip that might have been. The earlier plans included too many people since the Ladakh trip had go t to be too popular, particularity with freshman medical students in the middle of their summer vacation and well before they had seen their first patients or were very useful in any clinical skills. After 1,863 applicants, 20 were accepted (almost twice as many as I would want to immediately supervise as freshmen clinicians—and after the state department’s travel advisory, half of them were withdrawn. A few have trickled back, so that there will now be about twelve, about the right size for the group given a couple of non-clinical nurses and a sophomore osteopathy student who had been with me last year in Ladakh, and is here again, principally since she is following the driver Jimmy with whom she is interested in getting married despite his family ‘s objections. So, we will see what new adventures await in this venture, once again, into the known region of Ladakh, for this unknown experience!
I ARRIVE IN
“FRAPORT”,
THE “ATLANTA OF
EUROPE”,
WHERE MOST
ARRIVALS ARE HERE INTERLINE—
MAINLY TO SIMPLY
CATCH ANOTHER PLANE—IN MY CASE,
FOR A FLIGTH STILL
LONGER THAN THIS INTERCONTINENTAL FIRST FLIGHT
I am reminded that many of the details I write into my real-time “as it happens” On-Line Journal are the kvetchings of the inconvenience and techno glitches that must be overcome to transit through such long distances, and the counter-convenience of the new security regulations that impede travel. I refer to the inability to make a phone call from Dulles on departure because the new random security screening process had taken over the section of the airport where the banks of pay phones were located; then I go to another array of phones, and not a single one will take the credit cards I tried serially and through each of the four ways each could be inserted –each labeled by the automated voice “incorrect insertion” until it finally dismissed each as “invalid cards.” It is hard to contradict a computer generated voice which does not know what it is talking about but only has two pre-programmed responses, so it uses them universally when it does not want to work for any number of reasons—as all computer-automated devices have seemed to do. So, I will only add one more before accentuating the positive. I have made a thorough search of the Frankfort airport on each of the ten occasions I have landed here this year, and I know the only places where a “juice junkie” can get a “toke from the wall” to recharge the flattened computer batteries through a series of adapters I carry to get my machines back to working after only as much as an hour from both of the batteries together if I can power down and reboot after installing the second one in flight. I have made my customary search again upon arrival in the FRA airport and scurried to the roundabout where the Delhi flight will be taking off four and a half hours after my arrival. The only baggage I have checked is through-checked to Delhi, and it consists only of the medical kits with the packing list and donation slip prominently displayed on the boxes. No matter, I will be shaken down upon arrival in Delhi for the possibility of import duty revenue, which will take the usual one-hour delay at 1:30 AM as I am referred up the line to various customs officers. I have all of my personal effects in the carryon backpack I hope to use to trek up to Lingshed, but I also expect that THIS time, I may see my bags, which were left two trips ago in Delhi for my pickup. So, all that remains is to find enough electricity to charge the computer batteries to take some advantage of these two calendar days consumed n a chair at some 11,500 meters altitude.
The good news is that I am hooked into the single outlet in the airport that is still working to the best of my searching. The roundabout had four electric outlets, and three are now represented by holes in the walls with insulation and broken wires sticking out. The fourth one is under some seats and possibly obscured from those who have gone around deliberately disrupting any power source for the long-haul business traveler. I was told on one of my last flights that the electric outlets on board at the business class seats would now be available for laptop hookup, but I have never yet sat in such a seat on any plane as yet equipped with them, and when I ask, I am told that they are only present on some planes and in certain classes of service. I would be a very grateful user of this minimal service enhancement, yet I have not yet been able to take advantage of what seems to be obvious as a need for anyone who spends a lot of time aloft.
What I had instead was an Agatha Christie type “whodunit” mystery set in an English country house named Grosfield Park, for which I stayed only half awake. I had left the office in a full speed ahead push to begin the Thesis Proposal Outline, and might have been able to use that forward momentum. But, of course, sitting aloft only gives the ability to record ideas and not the extensive annotation of hundreds of bibliographic references from which I have presumably cribbed every one of my original ideas.
One of the new wrinkles I see flashing on my computer screen is an annoying note which informs me that I am working without a backup and I must immediately save my work since I am out of memory. Clicking back to check the four different directories on which I am tying this work shows 3 + GB remaining to be filled in the C and "My Computer" drives, and 1.35 MB on the new disc I had just started in this machine, so once again, the machine is only flashing what few signals it has to indicate it really isn't working, not because what the sign says has any basis in fact. These machines are becoming more human all the time! They have the capacity to lie and to make excuses that none of their nonfunctioning is any fault of their own!
ON A POSITIVE
NOTE:
I AM ON MY WAY,
MAKING PROGRESS IN MY RETURN TO INDIA,
AND SET OFF WITH A
NTOE FROM FORMER MENTOR JOSEPH MURRAY,
AND NOW AM HOOKED
TO THE SINLGE STILL EXTANT OUTLET IN FRA!
Allow me to
indulge in expressions of gratitude for small things, and—as I had stated in my
last sentence of Jul-B-2, some of the best experiences may begin with the most
inauspicious starts, if one keeps an open mind and a receptive optimism to what
is coming next!