FEB-B-2
TRYING TO FLY TO A VISITING PROFESSORSHIP IN UF, GAINESVILLE,
THROUGH THE SECURITY HASSLES OF THE “HEIGHTENED SECURITY” ALERT
WARNINGS FOR THIS PRE-WAR AND POST RAMADAN PERIOD,
WITH THE UNCONFIRMED HOPE OF SEEING DONALD
February 11--12, 2003
I am at last aboard a USAir flight to Charlotte, NC, through which I had last flown on leaving Florida after the Cumberland Island and Gainesville New Year’s visit, on the date of the crash at that airport of the first fatal commercial scheduled airline flight—on this same carrier—in over fourteen months. But, “why is today different than all other days?” Through unspecified but credible intercepted intelligence, there is a warning of a real and present danger from terrorists, acting in this period as the escalation of war preparations on Iraq with a deadline within this week, coinciding with the end of Ramadan, the beginning of Eid Fitr, and International events in splintering the European alliance on the actions in containing terrorism—all focused on my transit through the DCA security system this morning.
I had packed up a carryon bag, with the materials I would need for the lecture and also some items for the visit, including a pair of unlabeled photo albums I would be working on along the way –one volume I showing the events of the Christmas holiday season and the family photos I might be able to show Donald if I am still able to see him at all, and the Volume II of all the photos I have assembled from the Mission to Mindanao-03---with the goiters and operations for them of interest both because of the topic of my lecture to the University of Florida Grand Rounds—and also the complete record of the adventure travelogs, about to be posted on the Web Site Home Page tonight after a year of neglect in the updates.
I had forgotten that I had carried two cameras and several rolls of film, in the off chance that I might still be able to see Donald, with or without a chance to see the kids, I had decided to take all the cutting instruments (iris scissors, keychain Swill Army knife) out of the bag and leave them in the Bronco at GW, and then decided that I would take out the tape recorder and the photo albums to carry on and check my shoulder bag usually used as a carryon bag. But, no longer is it possible to carry cameras or film in the checked in bags, so I had to unload all of that and add that to my double handful of carryon stuff—which makes for a dicey transit through the gate checks, where I was checked with magic wands for even the spiral wire in my notepad. But, I am guaranteed safe now, and rather alone in the number of passengers who had gone through this kind of intense screening, with no end of hassles—limited to one piece of carryon item, and to remain seated for 30 minutes after any takeoff or approach to DC.
I had made these arrangements to visit Gainesville deliberately because of my son and his family living here, and the chance to include them in what his father does, as I had included what he does for a living in my last visit. But, after five phone messages on answering machines have gone unanswered and even more email messages regarding itinerary and plans have been unnoticed, I may be coming down to Gainesville, with all of the University of Florida staff aware that I was looking forward to the visit to see my family, I may not find any of them.
So, I have enough work to do along the way, that the trip may be worth it in the filling in of the albums, or in completing a chapter I have overdue for Alden Harken, or in outlining some events I have postponed, or in the putting together these series of the “on-line journal” for the soon to be updated section of the Home Page—the first since last year’s Mindanao-mission. And, in the middle of the day of the expensive air connection to Gainesville ( the cost of the round trip to the Philippines, and the coming trip to Malawi are approximately equal to this round trip mid-week simple back and forth Gainesville itinerary!) I may or may not make any connection with the other Gainesville Geelhoed’s.
CHARLOTTE, NC DOUGLAS AIRPORT
They are working on expansion or correcting this airport, with much barricaded off sine I was last here only a month ago. I do not know if that had anything to do with the USAir crash that happened that same day. But, I have my albums to be labeled, so the small Dash 8 that services GVL will be an hour and a half flight that I will continue to use for the labeling purposes.
GAINESVILLE ARRIVAL
It is warm and sunny. The bright sun I had left in DCA continues, but there it was glaring off the white snow, which I had lost by the time I got as far south as Charlotte. But, here, it is actually warm, and I am glad I left my topcoat in the Bronco at GW, since it will be one less thing to have searched and delay the transitions. But, I have leisure here to be typing while waiting under the portico outside the arrivals for—I know not what, since I am unsure whether I have had any of my messages to Donald received, erased or acted upon, and the default position of the personnel from the Dept of Surgery at UF are planning on picking me up at the Sweetwater Inn for dinner at Daniela’s tonight, so I will await her a bit longer (we did arrive twenty minutes early) and if no one appears here, I will take a taxi to the Inn and wait over there. Despite the ubiquity of cell phones, the only calls I get while roaming seem to be the calls that could as easily have been postponed from my office—one relating to the windows to be replaced at Derwood before they are included in the estimate from the additional bidder I had solicited for an opinion and estimate before settling on the go-ahead on the remodeling when the time comes after settlement to initiate the remodeling.
I had visited Keith Carr on Monday to deliver him some hog sausage and some venison as well as to give the assistant James Quigley this requested wild boar for his March first wild game dinner. I may have a March the first game dinner of my own, since that is the date of the SCI Chesapeake Dinner for the fundraiser to be held in an Annapolis hotel, for which last weekend’s dinner was preparatory. I will see if I can make it to that one, sine I believe Craig Schaefer will b e going to that one and we may meet there. I had a message from Marcus Zimmerman about the bushbuck being ready and called him back with a couple of additional plaques for the big bucks of this fall’s hunting season now in taxidermy, and I will see if and when Craig is able to make the trip with me, which will be about the time that the studio of the Zimmerman Wildlife is ready to be fully displayed. About that time it may be possible that I will be meeting with Dale Kramer of D G Liu to work out the details of the housing remodeling to get that started with one of the three I have asked to consider bids, but now additionally using the added replacement of the bathrooms as more to add in. With no kitchen and no bathrooms, it may be time to go on a very long trip or to move out into a rental place.
THE SWEETWTER BRANCH INN
A QUAINT VICTORIAN BED AND BREAKFAST INN
I got picked up by my Department of Surgery host Max Langham who is going to get his wife Sue, and we will be joining for dinner at an elegant place called Daniela’s –with most possibly just the three of us, since I have not yet got a response from Donald. So, we will have good companionship and a lot of things in common, and I have the recent photo albums to show him, since he is interested. I also heard that each set of grandparents for their kids is within range, and Sue’s father was a world class marathoner until he had a bypass, and Max’s father was with Rockefeller University in Cameroon and the far East, so each had done a great deal of traveling and learned a lot about the world, but enjoy Gainesville, which has the added advantage of being home.
MY FULL DAY AS VISITING PROFESSOR
WITH INVITATIONS REPEATED TO HAVE MY SON AND HIS FAMILY
JOIN AT ANY AND ALL EVENTS—
BUT EACH OF SIX CALLS UNANSWERED OR BLOWN OFF
AS I RETURN FROM ALL EVENTS TO THE SWEETWARTER BRANCH INN
TO REMEMBER—THIS IS THE SITE OF THE WEDDING RECEPTION FOR DONALD AND
CATHY IN 1996!
This has been a full and formal day of lavish hospitality to me and my named family members resident nearby in Gainesville, and the visiting professorships had been pre-arranged long in advance to include them. But, they did not show up, nor could I meet with tawny of them despite this being Donald’s day off. So, the U of F Grand Rounds was a great success in all but one detail and that is the absence of my family in this grand hospitality extended to me. Even the police officer at the airport from the GPD recognized my name and said he would relay my regards to my son, who seemed to be unable to come and do it directly himself despite the pre-arrangements, including the reception in the very same place where he had had his wedding reception.
I had a very early breakfast by the “Bed and B breakfast” crew by pre-arrangement, and then went to the Grand Rounds where I was met by a phalanx of old friends who had known me over several decades in several incarnations. Bill Pfaff knew me as the chief of transplantation, and Jim O’Neill as the pediatric surgeon from Boston. Max Lang ham and I seem to have abougt everything else in common, including a wonderful event the did dales t summer—flying his own Piper single engine plane cross country with his daughter Audrey, to stop for a few days of camping in Yellowstone, then a delivery of her to Vancouver to the Semester at Sea ship, which pulled out for its eighty days around the world cruise for her fifteen hours credit in her senior year at UF, and as the ship pulled out of port enroute to Kobe Japan, he flew his plane over the ship buzzing her in farewell, and taking photos of her below.
He had looked over my Mindanao picture and also discussed many cases with me that I had seen. Also, we have most of the small world in our cadre of friends in common. These include Paul Columbani, who had just given the grand rounds at GWU I had attended in Paul Shorb’s honor, and Alberto Pena, who’s Grand Rounds is the next one I will be giving at Long Island Jewish Hospital. We made rounds on all his patients in the extremely high tech world of pediatrics and NICU, and I saw just a single baby named Brooke awaiting her fourth liver transplant—an investment in a single individual which is probably more than the GNP of some nations I have visited. We can, therefore we must—even though this may be an extraordinary loss of resources in someone with loss of the kidneys from high anti-viral treatment, and she is now looking for a set of neonatal kidneys in addition, with some unknown neurologic deficit as well. I saw other kids such as a 780 gram bay born at 26 weeks, who has a probability of living that is about 75%, and about a twenty percent chance of retardation or seizures from neurologic abnormality—from a welfare mother that will soon have a two million dollar baby—an easy investment in the probable 180 days that can b e expected in the NICU in a “hothouse plant” incubator. My conclusion from it all----We are all simply advocates, and we are to take care of a given patient before us to the best of our ability regardless of the resources to be used in the salvage attempts and leave to others the triage on when too much is more than enough. But, if done by nonprofessionals, the decisions may often become ”We do not take care of Hindus, or Buddhists. Jews or Moslems, Baptists or Catholics, Communists or Democrats, and all the other kinds of discrimination of which the medical professionals are remarkably free—we treat them all, and collectively, we break the bank.
At the same time, Max is not going to the SUS meeting in Houston at which Alden is speaking this week, since he is going to Tallahassee to the state legislature to testify to get state funding for liver transplant patients, and we went through the extensive transplant registry and coordinators to make sure that the right mix of ethnic, colors, voter appeal, etc is represented—the democratic principle of PR and media appeal does it all ala “poster child.”
And, I shuttle back and forth between first and third worlds as an advocate for each—a position that would lead to schizophrenia if only the enormous waste at the margins is considered, which would pay for more than the entire nation states I deal with from what slops over from one of the single individual patients in treatments we know up front are likely to be futile. My barn-burner of a Grand Rounds considerations were still ringing in the ears of the residents and students as they went back to the wards to put three of the patients on “Status Four”—urgently listing them for the next available cadaver organ—with just the cost of UNOS registry being the equivalent of the next medical mission I have planned with all its participants and supplies included with their air fares.. They—and I –must simply continue to cultivate our gardens.
I then had meetings with the Chairman of Anthropology who had been summoned to attend along with some of his faculty, and the new director of international health programs, and had been directed to a man who was once a farmer and now is an advisor to WHO in nutrition, whom I may see or communicate with by email later. My handout had been circulated to those who had requested it. I then went to lunch at the Doubletree Hotel that the University of Florida runs with them as a conference center.
With no response from Donald either at the Doubletree where he was expected, or at the Sweetwater where we called again, I simply returned to the airport while my eager hosts were helpful in dropping me off. It would have been a perfect day and time to run. I have not been able to run because of the snow, ice, dark and cold in DC, and I have a marathon forthcoming in five weeks, and it has been ten days since I even laced up the shoes. I brought all the kit to run here, and could not since I was planning to make a rendezvous that did not turn out, and awaiting it used up the time before my return. It is sunny warm and beautiful in Gainesville, and I have the whole of the UF campus to run around and the Sweetwater Inn to return to change after showering, but after waiting further, this time with Jim O’Neill, I simply went to the airport and continued to fill in the labels on the Album II of my Mindanao experiences. While doing that, the news is all bad and getting worse: 1) Osama Bin Laden has been resurrected t urge the Iraqis to attack the US now, as is the duty of every good Moslem; 2) the Iraqis have missiles with five times the range that they had been limited to by law, and have new proof of both the WoMD but also the terrorists’ links; 3) North Korea has at least two plutonium derived nuclear weapons and has missiles capable of striking the Western US with this weapon.
Following this cheery scenario, the daylight of my potential run has faded, and I had to go through the excessive security zeal of the “TSA” at Gainesville, hardly a hot bed of al Qaeda activity, to get aboard the USAir flight to the Charlotte airport, where a pretty UF coed cannot stop talking about the fact that this is the same kind of plane flying the same route into the same airport as the one that crashed as I went through CLT on return from Cumberland.
My running shoes are in the bag checked below. But the checked bag does not contain the cameras and film I had taken along in the hope of seeing the kids again, since all such photography equipment must be hand carried now, since it would be destroyed in the new check-in bag security systems. So, on a typical trip such as to Malawi, I may have to carry two thirds of my in-cabin supplies as unexposed film in one direction, and exposed film in mailers on the return trip—almost a half bushel of stuff at my feet on the longer flights, and not an “active payload” of the kind of stuff I usually carry along to deal with in flight. And under the wings of the plane as I fly an hour and a half to CLT on this Dash 8, I see what will get deeper and colder along the northern route—a whiter blanket, replacing what I had seen as a warm running track in Gainesville after my wonderfully hosted Grand Rounds and Visiting Professorship.
OK, I take it back—there are two disappointments in my being here in Gainesville on an otherwise highly successful Visiting Professorship!