05-OCT-B-2
RAINY WEEKEND OF ELDP AND
CONTINUING DERWOOD DELIVERY DISASTERS
AND LAUNCH THE TRAVELS TO SAN ANTONIO
ENROUTE TO COLORADO
October 9, 2005
Happy birthday to Milly today, a week after Michael’s birthday, which I may be able to celebrate later today in San Antonio to which I am enroute through Denver International at this moment. I am flying through a lot of untied loose ends, as I ruefully noted on departure from Derwood in the pre-dawn blackness, when I had turned on the lights to reveal a lot of leaves rained down on the decks which I had been sweeping daily before the weekend deluge, and even more ruefully, looked toward the kitchen alcove where the new Viking refrigerator does not happen to be despite our own best efforts and a series of colossal screw ups by the Great Indoors to have attempted --and failed to--deliver it at all. I had hoped to have Derwood in the same pristine and magnificent appearance it had head on my last departure in the summer, when it suffered from the serial calamities after a prolonged power outage that indirectly destroyed every cooling appliance in house, the tiles and walls in the kitchen, and now the plumbing in the household since the cold water taps had to be turned off to disconnect the icemaker in the former Viking now moved out into the yard in pieces. With the cold water turned off, only hot water had run through such lines as the toilet tanks, so that the powder bathroom facilities softened up the valves and it has been leaking, so that the water is continually running, and the water heater had been continuously running. But there was not enough water pressure to get water through the showers, so I have been living in a very expensive Third World “bucket bath” environment where I am using the top of the line All-Clad cooking pot to dip water over my head in the shower stall. That is, until yesterday when the hot water failed also, so I went to the ELDP program late, since the heavy rain storm had knocked out power for the period when I was asleep, so that none of the alarms went off, so I had to struggle off to class without a shower even of the bucket bath variety, or breakfast, or even close to on time through a driving rain. This was on the fourth day of a guaranteed delivery for the Viking—which failed the fourth day in a row.
DERWOOD DISASTERS NOW COMPOUNDED BY
DELIVERY CHAOTIC “MEXICAN FIRE DRILL”
LEAVING HOUSE UNFIT FOR HABITATION, WITH NO WQATER, HOT OR COLD, AND NO INSTALLED KITCHEN REFIRGIERATOR OR ICE MAKERS
I was staying home from work for the second day in a row to get the delivery of the Viking on Monday and Tuesday, but the delivery did not take place until late on Tuesday, when there was also supposed to be a guaranteed visit by Verizon to put up the telephone line to the house ripped out by the Lowe’s delivery truck when they had brought the freezer and refrigerator freezer that were installed downstairs to replace the two that were discarded after the rot of all the contained meats with the month of power outage. Verizon simply did not show. When I called them with the repair order number given to me by the internet registration of the power line being down, they said that number did not exist, and gave me a new order, which, similarly, was not fulfilled. Then came the big delivery van with three Mexicans to deliver the Viking—a very big boxed appliance, at last here, even if late. So, proudly rolled out with all the furniture rearranged for its installation after passage through the house—it was unwrapped---a 47 inch wide side-by-side unit to be fitted in the 36 inch alcove where the top of the line Over-and-Under Stainless Steel Viking unit left back in the warehouse should have gone. They delivered the wrong one.
In addition to the rather prolonged process of taking the former Viking unit out of the kitchen in pieces by C & C Complete Cleaning Services on Monday, the large scraped wound on the cherry cabinetry was assessed by D G Liu Contractors on Tuesday—and it cannot be repaired, but the cherry wood drawer must be replaced. The Viking is out in the drive where it would be accessible by “Dinners for Homeless Women” who were supposed to call back for arrangements to pick it up and re-install its doors—all this while I was still there and before the heavy rains—but they did not make that connection either. Through the extraordinary favor of Diane Downing who took off form work on Friday to stay at the house while I was in the ELDP for 12 hours, and they guaranteed delivery between four and six o’clock. She stayed until nine o’clock reading the Africa issue of the National Geographic, but there was “no show”—later explained as “the rain, you know.”
A special run on Saturday was arranged for the delivery of the Viking while I was out, and once again, the store manager Randy was profusely apologetic “It is all our fault” but would work things out with the only limited time that Diane had to come over when the delivery was arranged through her. At ten o’clock, Diane having called three different pone numbers to tell them she had been cleaning in her garage in preparation for painting the walls and would be there between four and six o’clock, there was a pone message on my voice mail (the phone MUST be turned off in the course of the ELDP lectures) and I had recognized one of the Mexicans telling me in Spanish they were at Derwood with the refrigerator and where was I? Of course when that was known, (and I did not know it until midnight) Diane was called by Randy who said how long would it take you to get there—and she said twenty minutes. OK. She scrambled over and in fourteen minutes arrived at Derwood where there was no one and waited three hours for no one to arrive. When that message was relayed back through the managers, they apologized again saying “First thing on Monday morning.” I will be in Texas and she will be at work. So, a new time was worked out, again four to six PM for the fourth time for the “re-delivery”, and I had insisted on the voice mail message that I left that I would not be paying the five hundred dollars for the failed delivery, and an additional fee for installation when the D G Liu Contractor has been kept waiting three times to do the installation and that they need to give Diane a special gift certificate for big time bonus. The big sign in the store says “Free delivery on any appliance over $399” and I assured them that I managed to make that level twenty times over on this, the second identical unit I had bought from them, and that this "Mexican fire drill” is a caricature of everything bad about American service industries. So, we will see how many further attempts at getting the Viking delivered and the plumbing and cold and hot water rearranged so that the house is actually functional.
ABSENTEE HOSTING OF VISITS
During the interval of my absence, Diane is hosting a visit by Scott and Suze and the three daughters, and they will come to see the Derwood that they had seen in foundations the day after Hurricane Isabel hit. Now at two years almost to the day, after Hurricane Katrina, the damages are mounting up to about the same for each storm period.
I had mentioned last Oct-A-series that the month of September had been the driest month on record with less than eleven hundredths inch of precipitation of any kind. Now, over six inches of rain fell during the three day weekend as I was in the ELDP course with the temperatures plummeting about forty degrees. As I had gone to Ashburn in the driving rain each day, there were overturned cars and multiple wrecks with police cars standing nearby with flashers on but no one out in the rain, and I had noted that the leaves and branches that had been rained down in the yard and drive are accumulating fast. But without any water in the johns and showers, I found one place where there is lots of water—in the south facing attic window which had been left open an inch to let out the tremendous heat in the attic my sisters had helped re-organize last July before my departure. The rain had blown in horizontally to soak suitcases and other things stored against the attic walls, which I can do nothing about now, but will look into upon return—during which I must do a lot of other things as well including the six new deliverables of the ELDP assignments and the mid-term exam as well as two potential trips to Detroit and to Indianapolis, one of a “Organizational Diagnosis” project for our class in the first week of November.
IN FLIGHT,
DC, THROUGH DENVER TO SAN ANTONIO
I am enroute to Texas, after having awakened at 3:00 AM to get to Dulles at 4:30 to fly at 6:00 AM and it was tight all the way. I am only allowed two check-ins and one is the rifle case and all the technical hoops to be jumped with it. So, all the heavy weather clothing and sleeping bag and stuff for the hunt that has to go in the single duffel bag overloaded it as well as the stuff to be carried to San Antonio on the way—it was heavy as I realized by lugging it through the airport.—but I found out it was 63 pounds at check in with two pairs of boots, including my hiking climbing boots for one use in climbing, and with the forecast of deep early snow, my brand new insulated rubber Browning ankle-fit boots which I had packed to prevent any of the cold feet days I had had on prior hunts. Of course, I was surcharged for the extra weight in one bag, no matter that the rifle case is minimal, but it has to be checked in separately with lots of restrictions on ammo and other items checked separately. I may decide to leave it with Reg again since it is such a hassle getting it into and out of airports, and I will have to do that twice because of the stop in San Antonio.
THE TRANSMISSION OF THE CONTAGION
OF THE MEDICAL MISSION FERVOR,
THROUGH THE CASUAL CONNECTION OF THE HUNT
On the flight next to me is a fellow named Simons, who had checked in not only a gun case, but I had noted, a dog kennel as well. He is hunting geese and ducks in a field trial of his dog—a lab who is being shown off in this test. We first talked about the hunts, and then he was most fascinated about the mission that I do, and wants to come to GW from which he once got a Graduate Engineering degree, have lunch with me and bring his office manager to discuss the possibility of helping out with some arrangements. Many folks have said such things but few are as eager, it seems, to be doing something about it.
THE OUTSTANDING SUCCESS OF THE ERITREA PROGRAM,
WHICH I ATTRIBUTE DIRECTLY TO THE MEANINGFUL
EFFORTS OF MY GWU MEDICAL STUDENT PARTICIPANTS
The crest of that wave may be hitting me in the coming week of voice mail and email, since a full house came to the highly successful “Show and Tell program on Eritrea” on Thursday at noon. The students Amy and Sherry did a superb job, and had also organized a very good CD with the pictures I had given them as well as some of their own, but they also stitched in multiple brief video clips from the experiences in Eritrea when we operated together. Unfortunately, the videos were put in on a Mac with “Quick Time” a program made by Mac, and it was said to be “really easy” after simply downloading the freebie program of Quick Time to run the videos. I did son and no amount of high tech gurus were able to rescue the video segments. I had made copies and I hope it can play on your machines, but I am going to have to incorporate a Quick Time reader on the discs as well as huge laptop to get this done. If one lives by the high tech media sword, one must be prepared to die by it. I did a bit of ad lib Q & A response to the audience on the motivations for an African mission who took up the down time of the period when the tech help were scrambling to find the cables connectors and trying to rescue the cd program. They did for the still photos but did not for the videos, but the whole of it was highly effective, because of the sincere transformational emotive response of both the students and the kind of Q & A response to audience questions in that period of pause while the de-bugging of the AV systems took place. Haile Mezghebe came over from Howard and I incorporated him into the program, with a lot of audience members who had been with me in Haiti and others in Ladakh or Lingshed, so that her were many more “wannabes.” I was very proud of the excellent job that Amy and Sherry did. It will be a strong incentive for quite a number of participants in an already over-subscribed program of future missions.
THE NEXT MMHOF,
AS I REFLECT BACK ON THE LAST MMHOF,
AND PROPOSE CANDIDATES FOR THE FUTURE MMHOF
On that subject, Larry Conway, President of the Medical Mission Hall of Fame called me on Thursday just as I was mailing him a package of letters and included the cd from Eritrea and the recent newsletters from Jill Seamans showing the clinics we set up particularly for the trachoma eyelid surgery, are still going strong with the equipment and suture we had left behind this March. I had nominated both Jill Seaman and Rick Hodes for the MMHOF, and Larry asked if I might be interested in coming to Toledo to introduce them. The other will be Dr. Poppy who had worked with Paul Farmer in Haiti, proposed by Mike DeWine, Senator from Ohio and possibly to be introduced by Bill Frist. The overall emcee proposed by Larry Conway might be Robert Croskery. If all goes well, it would be a very good time to be there, and I would like to participate—then Larry said—“Mark the date, March 11, 2006. “Oh, dear, once again that is the ELDP weekend, and not only that, but the weekend of final preps just before the Comps! I might try to go anyway, since my missing the session in September for being AWOL in New Orleans was met by a standing ovation this Friday, led by Dr. David Schwandt, founder of the program. There were three others absent for the weekend for reasons of illness or long commute (Meg is weary of trekking from Hong Kong each month) so, I may be able to parlay my own “unprecedented” absence in February from one unique day of the course for the MMHOF celebration, into another such absence as a way of concluding my ELDP full-time program of attendance and the honoring of my own nominees as inductees into the MMHOF.
PARTINGS WITH FRIENDS
AND SIGNIFICANT OTHERS
I had corresponded by email and mail with the Croskerys when I had received a note that their friend Maria Tihany was near death, offering to make a last visit to her to relay some parting blessing of her good friends. It seems that she would wax and wane, and if I might be able to leave something behind that told of her friends in Cincinnati she might know she is well remembered. As I checked out at near midnight Saturday to get back to Derwood for the three hours I would have at home before departing my Derwood home, struggling to get back to a real habitation by its reconstructed renovations, I looked at my emails at Ashburn and discovered that Maria Tihany had died that day.
So, partings, and arrivals are not unique in the changing world I live in, but it may seem that the pace of such events has accelerated, and therefore, I do not want to miss important people in that transitions. It is for that reason I am heading right now to San Antonio—even if it means lugging a Weatherby 340 in tow behind me! I have then made a reservation (which must be confirmed by departure form Texas) for the second week of November after the next ELDP session to fly to Gainesville. Donald will have had his appointment with Tom Martin of the cardiac surgical department at UF, and will have come to some decisions as to the date and kind of valve he might have in an aortic valve replacement. Alden Harken was so kind as to review his cardiac catheterization data, and make recommendations of his own. He says that in a mechanical valve, it may last longer, but the valve does not wear out, the myocardium does, since the heart must work against a gradient, whereas the biologic non-stented valve has a zero gradient. He added a few references to this in papers I may have forwarded to Donald if my remote station at Ashburn was able to do so. I hope to have visited both the guys this fall, despite a high density of other important events.
SAMMY GORMAN’S FAST-PACED YEAR—
A COMPRESSED CENTURY OF HER LIFE
Sammy Gorman had written me and told me of the rapid pace of events in her life, which had brought her form a student protégé of mine .as a freshman in San Francisco as she had first gone with me to Ladakh, to the last meeting we had in her parents’ Lake Tahoe ski Lodge. That moment was a very eventful transition into a year that made here fell coming out of it “I feel like I am one hundred years old!” I met with her and Jimmy (Jigmet, her new Indian Husband to Be from Leh Ladakh,) as they were planning a “Monsoon Wedding” following her completion of osteopathy school after one last elective in rural medicine in Colorado immediately after her visit with me. They went on to Colorado, where an avalanche killed Jimmy (I learned only after return from Taiwan) and the whole family gathering that had been going to India for the wedding went to light the funeral pyre. She had stayed behind to paint a mural in the Buddhist Gompa in Leh in Jimmy’s honor, and then came back to San Francisco as I wrote letters to help her graduate and start a January residency at Hyland Hospital where Alden is Chief. She met a college boyfriend and the next she knew she was pregnant, so a baby girl Josie was born this past month—completing her one year rush from student on a medical mission, to med school near-graduate, bride, widow, resident, and now mother. She was enjoying a full time mother position now, and will be returning to Hyland on her own schedule. If my life is eventful with a rapid pace, some of the others around me look like a blur. Life happens. That includes the one very sure part of each one, as Maria Tihany and Tibby have also illustrated, and it is not the pace, nor length of it, but what the content of it might be in reference to others that counts.
“IN TRAINING FOR THE COMING 100TH MARATHON”
My “training” with nearly daily runs after two weeks of enforced non-running in the high security situation in New Orleans, has once again come to a screeching halt, just as the “just-in-time” delivery of new Reebok pumps were to be Fed Exed to me on Friday. As sure as the delivery of a Viking refrigerator,, the shoes did not arrive for me to be wearing them now for a bit of a run with Michael, before climbing the snowy mountains of Colorado as then next (only) exercise I might get before the Big Run October 30. The endurance run of the Maroon Bells snowy climb from Crystal Colorado” will have to suffice for the “training taper” before MCM-30.
DRAMATIS PERSONNAE
OF THE HUNT,
AND PERSONAL CHANGES IN THE PERSONNEL
But, Bo Henry sent me the reservation number for the four-wheel drive SUV to get up to Crystal CO along with a note that he has a cervical spine stenosis and is in possession of the MRI of his own spine while expecting to see me to read the MRI I had done of mine; “Lest I become a candidate for the Christopher Reeves club” he is going to see about a minimally invasive procedure to open up his spinal canal to relieve the same symptoms of a radiculopathy that I have had in the lumbar region, so he is missing the hunt, and I will have to see how he does with the treatment as I bank such information for my own future options. That means I will have to do the Wednesday morning early Denver arrival, pickup the SUV, and make the concerted run though the groceries and propane, beer etc, check in with Gene on the number and timing of the arrivals of everyone involved, and drive up to Vail to intercept Reg. This elk hunt—which Gene predicts will be a “harvest for the record books” is another one of life events that seems to unfold out of the chaos that bounds complexity as we go along, with variable points that are like what may have been done before, but never by quite the same actors as previously since we are all changed by our passage through other events.