06-FEB-B-4

 

EVENTS OF THE PRESIDENT’S DAY WEEKEND

NEAR DERWOOD,

AS THE SNOW MELTS AND THE PAPERS ARE COAXED OUT OF THE HAT IN TRYING TO CATCH UP AND AHEAD OF SCHEDULES SHRINKING IN FRONT OF ME

 

February 17—20, 2006

 

I just learned late on Friday that Monday was a holiday, both Federal; and for the “George Washington University” in honor of the namesake’s birthday.   I also learned that one of the stalwart Old Guard of the GWU Surgery Department, retired about fifteen years, but very active in my twenty five years on the staff, Dr. Howard Pierpont, had died.  The location of the Everle-Wheatley Funeral home was not given but the times of the wake were, so I tried to get to it after work on Friday and a long day in the office.

 

I had started at 6:30 AM fasting.  There were many details I had wanted to accomplish, and the first was an email to Andrea Casey she had requested accepting the terms of my waiving the “Inc” in Organizational Learning and accepting a ”C” grade (the first on my record) rather than have the written Comps postponed by months to years.  The second involved changing the grade to No-Pass on my HRD 390 dissertation proposal course form the summer in order that I might re-submit a revised literature review, which I did after spending a day home on Thursday after running on the Needwood Bike Trail (despite an aching stiff back) awaiting the oil change and servicing of the Audi A-4.   I had to re-submit the paper citing the name Mezirow in almost every sentence to support the psychologic investigation of the transformational learning of medical students that I have witnessed or experienced over four decades of international medical missions.  I hoped that the extensive acknowledgment of literature written long after the idea to do this study has been developed would make it appear that I have never had a novel idea of my own, but every word I utter came directly form some previous experience reported by others.

 

I sent the note to Andrea Casey who then went to the Dean of the Graduate School Nancy Gilmore and got the final OK and sent me back an email confirming that I could take both Oral Comps (a given before the crisis) but ALSO the writtens two days later with my Cohort 16 classmates, a short time after all the cramming and preparation were done for both orals and writtens rather than months to years later.  This would allow me to proceed directly into the dissertation phase along with my colleagues which would require a hundred page dissertation proposal and all the IRB approvals to get the students to answer questions, which means that the research I have already done is invalid since no “approval” had been issued for me to ask anyone anything.  So, it seems that this big hurdle is over—now I just have to produce, on demand and on schedule, at least one third of the interval time during which I will be gone. 

 

I then tried to handle a long list of the items I had listed for myself to get done in paperwork, and a whole flurry of near desperate emails and calls form last minute Rwanda arrangements—including two ticketed participants who had not yet filled out applications and both of them had dropped out without notifying anybody. Two others wanted to join, but they were inappropriate to begin with since there was a psychiatric problem with one and a health problem with the other and I did not want to fill the two vacancies with inappropriate people. 

 

I left to go to the Lipid Research Clinic where my BP was re-measured on the fancy impedance device---repeated often it is 96/60, HR 48 seated.  I had explained the unusual single factor of cardiac risk which appeared only last year at the same time when I had just arrived from Mindanao and received very bad news.  My lipids had gone up and the really bizarre reading of a high CRP (C Reactive Protein) an independent risk of heart attack, which is why some people with normal lipids have been said to simply die of a broken heart.  I could have been one of those, but I was also ill upon return, and had bronchitis and fever and was unable to get out of bed for two days after return—but I believe I have a better reason than the “intercurrent inflammatory illness.”  I was going to be re-studied (which is why I had my fasting blood drawn, in better times and without any current inflammatory condition other than my aching back) to enter a study if I do indeed still have an elevated CRP and normal lipids with a placebo controlled agent that is supposed to be good for such risk .  I will learn next week the results of the studies and whether I join a placebo controlled study.

 

All day I worked on paperwork getting out reports on students that were needed urgently even though the urgently needed evaluations of the Philippine experience and the show and tell program now a week past due were not produced in turn. I had tried to catch up on the email backlog, and sent a note to George Sevich letting him know I was unhappy about the sudden call that the Tur hide was ready (eight months late) but would be hostaged in a secret place until I coughed up the money for some new charges for the p[re-paid hunt.  I tried to Xerox a couple of copies of the SHDW through the recalcitrant new Xerox before it gets a code charger device on it to assign to me the toll for the copies I make.  A lawyer was visiting DC to talk with me and attend a wedding, and he blew off my appointment with him as his wife was not interested in his mixing the family event with business—clearly an advantage for his write off.  I found the USAir ticket I had bought for the aborted Indianapolis flight which must be used even though non-refundable within the year.  I then tried to find the directions to the funeral home.

 

I searched everywhere in Alexandria for an hour and a half during the Friday evening rush hour.  I stopped to ask directions four times and was given conflicting information each time. I called the funeral home twice and they thought that I should know how to get there if they named two roads I could not get to.  I finally made it the long way around (rush hour traffic bars some exits and makes one way roads of others) and came to the room where the embalmed body of Howard Pierpont, MD was resting in state under the flag.  There were a few family present including the two daughters.  I looked over the registration book for familiar names form the department, since Howard Pierpont was an integral part of this institution for sixty years.  I found none.  I was it.  I was the only one of his work colleagues who had come to the wake to pay tribute to the long-standing association he had with the institution.  His elder daughter asked me for stories and I gave her quite a few over the thirty years I had known him and the first that he had carried out over that time.  She had hoped someone would show up to say a few words at the funeral tomorrow, but since no one had volunteered or even appeared, she would give the stories I had told her in my place, since I have been invited to the Asfaw Fanta family (my Ethiopian neighbor’s) at the same time for a late lunch early dinner that would take the most of the day.

 

Saturday I ran.  It was hard. First, it was thirty degrees colder than my last run and my new “breathable “ Reeboks made my feet cold to the point of numbness.  But, it was also a problem that my back had been so troublesome that it made my leg numb, stiff and painful, and I had to stretch several times while running, less often than I had to do the same when standing around, as I did next in a shopping run around Giant for extensive grocery shopping. The only happy part of that trip was the arrival of the annual Sports Illustrated Swim Suit (or “paint”) issue, always the only cheerful point in the doldrums of the year.

 

SWAPPING VISITS WITH MY NEIGHBORS,

ASFAW AND TENNEY FANTA AND FAMILY

 

It was about eighteen months or more ago that I had invited the Fantas to come to see my house, which was gutted at that time and promised a return tour when it was finished.  They had invited me over for lunch at about two o’clock for a big Ethiopian dinner feast and much wine and after dinner drinks which needed a fair amount of Ethiopian coffee to stand up straight, which itself was hard to do because of my recalcitrant back pain.  They had been eager for me to meet a friend who was on Fulbright at Johns Hopkins doing environmental health and I talked with him about both the Addis Ababa University and Gondar University.  I brought along the Ethiopian photo album of my last visit.  I was surprised at the bevy of pretty young women of their family each o whom are now finishing graduate programs in fields as different as accounting and environmental science were fascinated with the medical and surgical results of the mission and how they wanted to join in.  The hard working “all American success stories” of each of them is interesting to note, since the kids are far more American than African and are interested in me since I am far more African than any of them, regardless of their birth.  Their daughter Addis Trina Fanta means a new beginning, since they had moved form Addis Ababa to Nairobi at her birth and from there, through Tanzania, to the US where he works as a geographic information scientist for the Maryland national Park and Planning Commission.  They had seen my house when it was all blown apart and were eager to see it now.  So after being overfed, and after saying goodbye to the AAU professor whom I might meet in Addis, they all came over for the Derwood house tour.  They loved the Game Room and wanted lots of stories from the different trophies, particularly the African ones.

 

I tried to run a couple of times in the bright sunny but very cold wintry weather.  I was handicapped by a really bad stiffness in my back and a secondary pain and numbness down my leg (now predominantly my right.) It stretches out when I stop to do so, but it is a problem in re-doing that every mile until it recurs after shorter and shorter intervals along with run, and some of the time I must just limp along.  I got my 25th MCM marathon patch and certificate, and thought as I put them on the shelf, somewhat wistfully, “I wonder if the 100th was also the last?”  I am not waiting to find out since I paid for and am registered in the 31st running of the MCM this next October.

 

Something else might be happening this October.  I got a call form Howell Simmons, the engineer whom I had sat next o on the plane as I was headed out to visit Michael, Judy and the twins last October, and went through Denver to which I would be returning to rent a Durango, buy the groceries and get up the mountains to hunt elk in the snow.  He had started me talking about hunts and medical missions and he had asked to introduce me to pastor Jupa of Rwanda, and the rest—as they say, is history.

 

Howell Simmons called just after I had arranged with the foursome of my Mindanao mission to set up the Show and Tell presentation for Monday noon February 27, and with the Rwanda team for the “Packing Party” at Derwood on Wednesday March 1 at 4:00 pm.   Howell Simons and his wife will be coming to both of these events and I had suggested he accompany me on May 27 to the Chesapeake Chapter of the SCI in Annapolis for the annual banquet.  He offered me a chance to accompany him on the same six day trip to Alberta Canada to shoot ducks and geese with his retriever dog working overtime to pick up the 48 birds I could presumably shoot.  This might be a chance for me to get the Canada, Ross’s and Snow geese to hang form the Game Room ceiling in full flight mount, as well as a mallard or other ducks. The Game Room is otherwise filled up, with the addition that the Tur is now ready at the tanner only eight months later than promised, but is being held hostage for “further charges to be paid.”  I wrote the outfitter who has ignored my calls and emails for the last eight months and now has decided I should pay up more after the fully pre-paid hunt before he will release the Tur. I had called Gina Tyler the taxidermist who is very eager to get after it; every bit as eager as I am not to yield to extortion.  I have already proved that on previous trophies over which someone thought they could shake me down, and although I do have the last space reserved for ht Tur, there is no way I am going to accede to extortion.  I will be going October 8—14 with Howell Simmons and his young superb field dog to hunt birds in Canada.

 

I hosted a brief visit by Craig Schaefer who had driven over and I told him to use the key and come on in as I was on my way back form church.  I had forgotten that I had set the alarm, so he triggered it upon entry.  He called me to turn off the alarm, but not before I had a call form ADT Security services, which I am happy to know is on the job—and I was able to keep them form sending the police over since a false alarm starts at $25, and works its way on repetition up to $1000 per call.

 

At church there was an embarrassing moment also.  A derelict parishioner named Caroline who usually sits in the front row and is quite audible in all her remarks has been quick to tell of her recent transformation in which she is off “all mind-altering substances” and came to church a few weeks looking quite respectable.  But, Sunday was not one of those days, and she barged in late and moved to the front, drunk and disruptive and was ushered out screaming that the church was dead and she had no more use for it.  The deacons have been very busy with her as had been the pastor, so this was an unwelcome backsliding; but the group prayed for her that the storm might be calmed and she would be saved from further danger.

 

Now, I have to hunker down and write multiple papers and quickly so, despite a few other weekend visitors and a hope for another run in the cold during these “GW holidays.”

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