04-SEP-B-2

THE ARRIVAL IN SAN FRANCISCO

AND THE EARLY INTRODUCTION TO THE HARKENS’ NEW HOME AND THE DEPARTMENT AT ALAMEIDA COUNTY MEDICAL CENTER UCSF GRAND ROUNDS

September 8—9, 2004

I am in the air over mid-continent; somewhere below it is hot and flat. The nearly empty airbus is flying in the post-Labor Day everyone back at work and school season—something recognizable for me as I drove in to work this morning in a light rain that had the commuting time crawl toward two hours. As long as I have lived here, it has seemed that every September the sleepy southern town that Washington is doubles in traffic flow in an abrupt quantum leap after Labor Day. They had previously added on to the repair of lanes to 270, paving the median strip to the point that it is now one of the largest highways on earth and there is nowhere else to add another set of lanes or paving anything more, so now the traffic flow simply stands to a slow crawl, and first gear was most of my forward progress when there was any at all.

I am making forward progress now, since there is not traffic obstructing me and the medium is not very resisting up here, and a cross continental flight used to be something I would prepare for as quite an event. I remember well my first trip to San Francisco to attend the ACS meeting in the first year of my NIH career. As soon as I arrive, I will be met by Laurie and Alden Harken who will take me out to dinner in a San Francisco restaurant along with one of his faculty members who was junior to me at the at time when I was at NIH in the NCI Surgery Branch, Patrick Twomey. I had spotted him at the ACS perhaps once in that interval but not really talked to him in the thirty years interval gap. So, it will be a reunion of third of a century type as I meet with the Harkens and see Twomey tonight and as I serve as Alden’s visiting professor tomorrow, probably giving the same talk he had asked me to give at the Brown Palace at one of his excellent conferences during his long stay at University of Colorado. It will be my third major reunion with the Harkens, this year, once at the Virginia country side in the Lansdowne Resort and the new addition to the air and space museum when Laurie helped re-select paint colors for the Derwood remodeling—I have the pictures of the now-finished product to show her what her handiwork turned into. The second was our delightful retreat in Lake Tahoe, at each time having a wonderful bit of exercise, which included cross country skiing the first day and the alpine skiing the second day as I gave a pair of talks at his Horizons in Surgery conference, always a good and rewarding attendance. I had gone on directly from Tahoe through Reno and Los Angeles then Narita Japan to Taipei Taiwan in order to get to Nanhua University for the Taiwan visiting professorship that had been an interesting tour of central and south Taiwan but had knocked me out of my pre-registration for the Cherry Blossom Ten Miler, the traditional start of the summer road running experiences. And now, in the interval with a lot of things having transpired, I am returning on short notice to be Alden’s visiting professor at his new program in the UCSF system in East Bay California, in Walnut Creek where he lives and in the Highland Hospital (Alameda County Medial Center) and several associated Kaiser Hospitals.

Of the interval affairs that have transpired, the one that surprised both Laurie and me, when I called a few days into the events was her recent diagnosis of breast cancer and here surgical treatment and the start on chemotherapy. Despite that she was interested mostly in talking about my own problems and what had become of several forward progress issues in my life and that of Virginia. We will, of course, go out and enjoy some kind of outdoor activity while I am here, but we will also go on to the Halsted Society meeting in Stanford, at which we had all gathered two years ago in High Hampton North Carolina. Alden and Laurie are superb friends and I had hoped they might be able to go to his event, which now determines that I will be joining them in it.

So, with the de ja vu all over again, I am rolling in to SFO with a brief visit to San Francisco along the Embarcadero, a longer visit in East Bay, and then a few days down the Peninsula between Silicon Valley and the wine country of the coastal range at Stanford, each of which are under new management by friends from different parts of the country all of whom have made something further out of their careers. It is the right group at the right time, and next year I have the return to Cincinnati to look forward to!

So we three objectives, in order of the priorities: 1) I will see and visit with the Harkens as their guest, 2) I will be Alden’s visiting professor at UCSF East Bay, and 3) I will attend the Halsted Society, always a wonderful event, this time hosted by the eager new team at Stanford University, eager to show us a good time, which will include a visit to Tom Fogarty’s vineyard in the wine country of the Peninsula overlooking Silicon Valley. Here we go on the fast track in a good place with better friends!

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