To Write, or Not To Write-Is That the Question?

I was on an early morning walk through the neighborhood, Cooper as always pulling at his leash, sniffing at every signpost, looking out for every one of his girlfriends. We came to an intersection and Coop gave a tug, drawing me across the street to a corner lot where a new pup was romping with a woman whom I had never met before.

We crossed the street and in the neighborhood tradition the Pup-Mom and I exchanged the essential facts about our dogs–where we got them, their lineage, their age, and then admired the coats on each other’s furry friend.

While the dogs were playing together and just before Cooper got muddy pawprints all over the new human neighbor I remembered my social graces and introduced myself. “Oh,” she said. “I recognize the name. Aren’t you the writer?”

Wow! Yes, my family and a lot of friends, colleagues, and social media contacts know I write a blog. They will sometimes bring up a particular post, mention they found it informative, or well-written, or fun. Or they will complain that my inclusion of a particular song has planted a weeks-long earworm in their brain. Those interactions are always with the clear understanding that my relationship with them is primarily that of a relative, co-worker, or friend who sometimes spits out 500 electronic words.

But this was different. I have never before been recognized as someone who tries to tell stories as part of my identity. It was thrilling.

Though I didn’t ask, I assume the neighbor (whose name in my true absent-minded fashion I have already forgotten) had read one of the blogs I had posted on the neighborhood FaceBook page–maybe my silhouette dog vs. geese story. But whichever blog it was, something I had written had stuck in her mind for at least a few weeks. I felt like the garage band who had heard their song on the radio for the first time.

So when my inevitable retirement as a full-time pathologist comes around, maybe I will give this writing thing a serious look. Take one of those online masterclasses (learn how to write short stories from Joyce Carol Oates or creative writing from Margaret Atwood) and eventually learn to write dialogue. I will finally produce that medical thriller Barb is always telling me I have inside my head.

Cooper, you have done me a favor with your insistence on meeting every dog in the neighborhood. Maybe I will just write a novel about you!

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Every Paper Clip Is Another Life Changed

A small cylindrical plastic container sits on the desk behind me. I am not sure what it originally contained but now it is filled with paper clips. A quick glance tells me it must have a couple of hundred clips inside it, and every day I add a few more. I empty the receptacle a few times a year, but in the meantime, each clip tells me that someone’s life has been changed.

How is that so?

Medicine is more and more digital these days. You complain to your friends about how your internist spends more time typing into their laptop than they do talking to you. Your prescriptions go out to the pharmacy electronically, and reminders about your next appointment zip to your cellphone, instead of coming on a little postcard in the mail.

Here in the lab, we are digital too…but we still use a lot of paper. While most of the blood tests we do are managed without anything written down (each analyzer “talks” directly to the interface that sends results to our docs), we handle our biopsies quite differently.

Our Laboratory Information System (fancy name for lab computer) contains all the necessary information about patient age, and gender, and the site from which a bladder or prostate biopsy has been taken. But when I am looking at cases from 15 or 20 different patients, it really helps to have this data printed out. Also, I like to create paper worksheets for my prostate cases on which I can mark my findings for each of the dozen or so cores from each patient.

When my final diagnosis for the case is benign prostate, I can enter my findings from the worksheet directly into the LIS myself with a few keystrokes, and then add my electronic signature. No extra trees need to be cut for those cases.

But for patients in whom I find cancer, I turn my completed worksheet over to our administrative team. They keyboard the complex findings into the LIS and then print a copy of exactly how my report will appear to the clinicians.

When those printed cancer case reports come back to me, I review the information, correct the rare typos, have one of my colleagues concur on the malignant diagnosis, and affix my electronic signature in the LIS. The report can fly off to one of our urologists through an electronic labyrinth.

But because I need to select the appropriate charge to the patient for the laboratory and pathologist services, the reports are paper clipped to a billing slip. When I separate the report from the billing slip I toss the paper clip into the little container behind me. The container fills, each added clip representing another person given the diagnosis they were dreading and hoping to avoid.

Making those diagnoses is a pretty awesome burden and at times a humbling experience. I just hope that I can be as consistent as a bucket-full of paper clips; doing my job, holding it together, and remembering that there are people whose lives may be altered by every one of those diagnoses. They all deserve the best that I can be.

The above is the opinion of the author and not UroPartners LLC.

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Will You Be My Sous-Chef? No Experience Required!

It is Sunday evening. For most people, the workweek will begin tomorrow. But for me, it will begin now. It is “pack my lunch bag” time and there is so much to be done.

First, a little background.

1: The medical laboratory business tends to be an early one, so I am usually in the lab by about 6 a.m.

2: Our operation is in an office complex without a cafeteria.

3: I am not a fan of food delivery. And I find carry-out food usually cold and unappetizing.

So with those things in mind, my lunch bag actually contains breakfast, lunch, and a mid-afternoon snack. Exactly seven (not eight or heaven forbid, only five) items. And did I mention I am very picky about what I am eating?

Prep and packing time, particularly on a Sunday night with a week’s work of prep to be done, needs to be a precision operation, involving no less than 3 knives, strainers, colanders, and exactly the right storage containers to make sure everything fits in my insulated lunch bag.

We begin with the lunch wrap. First, take a whole grain wrap and spread (knife #1) with prepared horseradish, the kind that contains only ground horseradish and vinegar–not the creamy kind. Lay on the lunch meat (Boar’s Head Maple Covered Turkey Breast) and cheese (Regular Jahrlsburg–never the low-fat version.) Then artfully arrange several pieces of thinly sliced (knife #2) Jalapeno peppers for some heat, and peeled and sliced (still knife #2) ripe avocado for creaminess. Roll the wrap and use a serrated knife (#3) to cut into two equal halves, one for Monday, the other in Saran Wrap ready for Tuesday.

I wipe a bead of sweat from my brow.

Next, I pull a bag of cooked rice out of the freezer. When heated (4 minutes, high power) in the lab microwave and doused in Cholula Hot Sauce it makes a tasty side dish. Finally, I wash and package baby carrots and red and yellow mini-peppers for some color and beta-carotene. Lunch is fully constructed and packed. Now on to the other meals…

Breakfast is a comparable snap. A piece of Genesis 1:29 Sprouted Whole Grain Bread, defrosted and ready to be toasted in the lab and then blanketed with a shmear of the Smucker’s Natural Peanut Butter (crunchy, of course) that I keep in my office fridge. This will be topped by a carefully measured 1/4 cup of blueberries, just enough to top the toast from edge to edge without any rolling off the sides.

Whew, almost done. Just my afternoon snack left to bundle up. A stick of string cheese (I thought string cheese was only for kids, but my nutritionist hyped it for protein) and some fruit (cherries in season, otherwise grapes or a Granny Smith Apple-green and tart as can be) and I am done.

Exhausted, I can zip up my lunch bag and pop it into the refrigerator at last.

The musical “Next to Normal” has played Chicago a few times. It features a bipolar mom freaking out while making lunches for her family, tossing bread all over the kitchen. I am just packing for one, and I know the feeling. I might start flinging sandwiches any time.

I need a sous-chef, or at least someone to do my prep. Any volunteers?

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How Ba-Ba became Ba-Ba

I recently posted my portrait, drawn by my granddaughter H, as a new cover page on Facebook. After lots of positive feedback, I decided to repost the blog below from 2016.

What’s in a name? I blogged a while ago that I have never had a nickname. It is as glaring a deficit in my personal history as not having a tattoo would be for today’s millennials. Somehow, I have learned to live as “Les”. And my full name, “Lester”, has taken on a bit of a cache since Leicester City, F.C. won its remarkable 5000-1 championship in the British Premier League Football. Yes, “Leicester” is pronounced “Lester” (and “British Premier League Football” is pronounced “Soccer.”)

But now I have a special name! I have had it for several months, and like most special names it is one that no one could predict. What makes it super-special is that it came from my granddaughter H. I am proud to be Baa-Baa.

It is always fun to guess what children will call their grandparents. When H was a newborn, Barb and I played that game. Barb was hoping for “GlamMa”, defined by Urban Dictionary as “the new Grandma, a woman with a sense of self and style. ” Yes, that would fit Barb. I had no special preference, but we both agreed that we did not want to be Bubbie and Zaydie, names we still feel are a little too old school.

So how did I become Baa-Baa? Every Friday morning while Barb is babysitting for H the three of us spend a few minutes Face Timing. On one of those morning calls, I gave H an iPhone tour of my office, including the row of bobbleheads on a high shelf above my microscope. There was a one-armed Robin Ventura, a stern Carlton Fisk, Detroit Tiger star Miguel Cabrera, and even White Sox groundskeeper Roger Bossard. H was fascinated as I bounced their heads up and down. Soon all our Friday calls started with H calling out for the bobbleheads. “Baa-Baa, Baa-Baa” was her greeting to me. And that’s what I became. Not Robin, or Carlton, or Miggie–but I will take Baa-Baa any time.

As for Barb, both of H’s grandmas became Na-Na. But now that H is a little older and wants to differentiate between her two wonderful grandmothers, Barb has become Na-Na-Baa-Baa. It works!

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Stop Playing this Song. I’m Beggin!

I’m at my desk listening to the sports radio “experts” discuss the White Sox chances in the playoffs, and the future of Andy Dalton now that Justin Fields is the Bears’starter. I am peering through my microscope, drawing lines and dots on the prostate slides. All is as it should be.

And then I hear it. Again. For the third (or is the fourth?) time in the last 90 minutes, I am forced to sit through that song as it plays on the radio in the lab, the one right outside my office. And I shudder.

I am suffering through a song called Beggin’. A little research (isn’t that what we call looking things up in Google and/or Wikipedia?) tells me the song is a remake of a Four Seasons song from 1967. This cover version is by an Italian band called Maneskin and isn’t even new. It was recorded four years ago but has only hit the charts in English-speaking countries this year.

How can I describe it to those fortunate enough not to have not yet been exposed? Remember Dave Seville and the Chipmunks? Think of one of their songs, recorded at 45 rpm, sped up 78 rpm. Then imagine that English is not the Chipmunks’ native language and that they seem to have no idea what the lyrics mean. And then pretend you are hearing the song over and over and over.

It’s not just that the song is being played by the Eric Ferguson-less-Mix every quarter-hour. I can’t escape it at my Fitness Center where it’s on the overhead music stream. And the final indignity, it has hit the WXRT heavy rotation list. C’mon Lin Brehmer, this is Chicago’s Finest Rock? Just play Sympathy for the Devil one more time.

It has happened to me once before, a song drifting from the lab into my office over and over. It was back in 2006, the first summer we were in operation. That is the summer Justin Timberlake was bringing SexyBack…and back…and back.

At least ‘XRT never jumped on the JT bandwagon.

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Oh well, I assume Beggin’ will wear out its welcome in the next month or so. Just in time for the people in the lab to switch the radio to WLIT and non-stop Christmas music. By then I will be ready for a little Santa Got Run Over by a Reindeer.

You Are Batty If You Don’t Get Vaccinated

A rabid bat. Photo courtesy Chicago Tribune.

Did you read the news story? Earlier this month, an 87-year-old man in from Spring Grove died from rabies right here in Lake County. How did this happen?

He had been bitten by a bat. The bat was trapped and tested; the testing confirming the bat was infected with rabies. The man was advised to seek medical treatment, which might have been life-saving, but refused.

I don’t know the intimate details of why the man declined treatment. Perhaps it was due to his age and the nature of the therapy (multiple injections over a 14 day period.) But doesn’t his refusal remind you of something?

Suppose there was a “something” out there that could decrease the risk of your catching a highly contagious disease, a disease that might have serious health effects on you, and that you might transmit to your children, your parents, your friends, and your co-workers.

Suppose that “something” was an injection, or maybe two, with maybe an extra jab a few months later. Suppose the health risk of those shots was minuscule compared to the risk of the disease. Suppose it was the only thing in health care that was free! And suppose getting that the jabination might protect your loved ones, others around you, and the nation at large?

What in the name of common sense would prevent you from getting that “something”? Maybe you would wait a few weeks to see if there were any unanticipated harmful side effects in others. Maybe there would be a delay because it would be hard for you to take time off of work, or get child care when you went to get jabbed. But what if the “something” was available at virtually every corner–or that health care workers would come to you to administer it?

OK, there may be a few people with a legitimate history of severe allergic reaction to previous “somethings.” I can these those people hesitating. But other than that–why, oh why would you refuse?

Learn a lesson from the late bat-man of Spring Grove–refuse what is good for you, and you might just wake up dead.

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Five Things Worse Than Going To The Dentist

#5 Waiting in a TSA line at O’Hare Airport

#4 Being woken up by the dog at 2:30 am

#3 Deciphering Medicare enrollment

#2 Buying a car

#1 GETTING A PHONE UPGRADE

Yesterday was the day. Verizon’s offer on discounts for trading in older iPhones for the new iPhone 13 models ends at the end of this week, so Barb and I decided that it was a good time to upgrade our beaten up, cracked, perfectly functional, old phones for some spiffy new ones. And of course, Laury’s phone was to be included, under terms of her “forever plan.”

The nearby Verizon dealer we tried to visit was closed, despite posted hours that indicated it should have been open. So we headed north on Milwaukee Avenue to where we remembered another dealer to be, only to find they had moved. A Google search identified the newest location, and we drove over. I should have known by then it was going to be a rough day!

One lucky break; there were no other customers in the store when we entered–we just beat the rush, customers who came in later than we did were facing two-hour waits.

With the store empty, we were pounced on by a sales associate immediately. Our pouncing sales rep surely recognized us as a big whale to reel in. He raced us through the various different iPhone 13 models, eager to sell us the iPhone Pro Max Super-Deluxe-Fancy-Pants-with Five Cameras model. He was clearly disappointed when we chose the more “mid-level” selections, but he was not to be thwarted in getting us to spend every possible cent.

The upgrade/option parade began. “Don’t you want more memory? Sure, this is enough for now, but maybe you will wish you had a few hundred more gigabytes two years from now. And your unlimited plan is OK, but if you pay $40 more per month you will get a more unlimited plan plus a bunch of streaming apps you probably won’t use. And don’t you need insurance? The cost per month is more than you are paying for the phones, but don’t you want the peace of mind?” The only hustle missing was the “let me talk to our manager and see what we can do for you…”

Somehow we resisted ~~all~~ most of his pitch. Yes, in addition to our phones, we did leave the store with an assortment of cases, screen savers, and a wireless charger that I will be returning today because it doesn’t work.

I won’t go into how much hair I pulled out transferring the data from my old phone to the new one. I am sure our incredibly slow home wi-fi has something to do with the 3-hour ordeal, but maybe Barb had it right when she told me my brain clearly lacked the memory and storage for another update.

I don’t mind. I may be growing oldish, but at least I have a shiny, new, blue, iPhone. If only I could get it to talk to my watch…

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Have You Said Goodbye to a Forever Home?

Five years ago this month the trucks rolled up our Long Grove driveway. First came the moving vans, separating our furniture into two collections, one group to be placed in storage while construction of our new home was being completed, the other batch to furnish our temporary rental. This was followed by the We’ll-Get-Your-Junk mobile, hauling off the leftovers; rejects that not even Goodwill wanted. We locked up and said goodbye to our “forever home.”

I don’t think the term “Forever Home” existed when we built the house in the early 1990s. We just knew we were set to put down roots and stay somewhere for a long, long, time. It’s not that we had been nomads previously, anything but, but this was where we wanted to raise our children, and where we would reside while life’s passages took hold.

Our kids were barely beyond the toddler stage when we moved in. Twenty-six years later, in our last family photograph at that house, our nuclear family was supplemented by a wife, a fiance, and our first two grandchildren. The photo was taken on a sunny August afternoon and I like to think all our dazzling smiles were thinking of the wonderful times in that house, as well as the future ahead.

That house saw so much. Celebrations–birthdays, anniversaries, proms, election victories. Tragedies–the deaths of my father and sister. An important victory–Barb’s success against melanoma. And more pets than I can count on one hand.

The house changed over time as well. A small addition for the sake of a big piano. A foosball table that migrated from our over-the-garage bonus room to a finally finished basement, where our offspring and their friends could hang out. A remodeled en-suite bathroom that we enjoyed; a remodeled kitchen that we never got the benefit of.

But I admit that I grew restless after twenty-five-plus years. I grew tired of running the same 5K routes. The long slog to and from the tollway became more than I was willing to endure on a daily commute. And our neighborhood friends were leaving for their own downsizers, or for a home in the permanent sun of Florida or Arizona.

If you are a long-time reader of this blog and its predecessor, you know the process of convincing Barb, finding/building a new home, and selling the old one, was complex and not always straightforward. But we persevered.

And now our “forever home” is five years in the rearview mirror. But like the sign says, “Memories in the mirror are closer than they seem“–and worth cherishing.”

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For Its Inventor, The Game of Life is over.

The Game of Life-the box top I remember.

Pink and blue pegs in a tiny plastic car. A pathway that took you to college and a job. A spinner that made a great, whirring, sound but needed it frequently oiling. Stock and insurance certificates. And $100,000 bills with Art Linkletter’s picture on it. It was all in The Game of Life.

I grew up in the mid-’60s playing Life with my family. It was faster-paced than Monopoly, less cerebral than Scrabble or Chess, and harder to cheat at than Go to the Head of the Class (yes, I memorized all the questions). And it was fun, twirling the spinner and hoping for the career with the highest salary. You could wind up a millionaire, or you could wind up in the poorhouse.

By the time we were raising our kids, Life had fallen well down the list of treats on family game night, far below our favorite, Sorry. Still, our first thought for the theme at Laury’s Bat Mitzvah was to base the celebration on Life. Only when the party designer couldn’t grasp the concept did we switch to an Animal Kingdom idea.

This morning I learned that Reuben Klamer, the man who invented The Game of Life, passed away on September 14th. He was 99 years old–almost making it to that ultimate life marker of a century.

It feels like another little bit of my childhood is seeping away. As the sole survivor of my first nuclear family, I have no one to share that time of my life with. There is no one who remembers the nightly dinner table (always starting with Campbell’s Soup, always including dreadful canned vegetables); who remembers the Sunday night’s watching What’s My Line (me peaking around my bedroom door into the living room); who remembers the weekly walk down Morse Avenue to Ashkenaz for kreplach soup, a toasted bagel, and a Coke.

So you see Mr. Klamer, the end of your days has made me nostalgic and a bit sad. I don’t know how you lived your life, but I know your Life was part of a wonderful time in mine. Wherever you are now, your spinning wheel will never stop whirring for me.

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Ring-a-Ding-Ding, I Do Hate This Thing!

The sound of glass breaking. Once, then twice. I roll over, squinting to view the digital clock on my bedside cabinet. 2:37 a.m. I know from experience that no one is breaking one of the glass panels in our paneled front door. I know it is only the Ring app on Barb’s phone–the latest in modern security–letting us know a fern from our potted plant is waving past the sensor at our entrance. It’s another dream disturbed, another good night sleep lost.

Remember when we built this house five years ago, the original raison d’être for this blog? We put some technology in: wi-fi and soundbars and an electronic door lock. We have added tech through the years: Alexa now allows Google to track our every move and utterance, and we have a nifty motorized window shade. But we had resisted Ring.

Our front and side doorbells were nothing fancy. If someone pushed the doorbell button, Westminster chimes played. The tones were slightly different for the two doors, though I admit the dogs learned which tone was for which door better than I did. We would then stand, walk to the appropriate door and open it. Just like it has been done for millions of years.

A few months ago, while having some Wi-Fi updating done, we succumbed to temptation and had the Ring doorbell/security cameras installed, and added the app to our iPhones and Apple watches. And gave away a little bit of our sanity.

My wrist now vibrates every time Barb takes Cooper out for a walk. I get a tingle every time Barb goes out to water the flowers. I am alerted every time a goose waddles by and whenever debris gets blown by one of the doors.

Yes, I also now know important things such as every time FEDEX or Amazon makes a delivery to our home. But unlike many of our neighbors, we don’t do all that much online ordering. So far, deliveries have accounted for less than 1% of all the alerts–and the most frequent of those deliveries has been Lou Malnati’s Pizzas. And believe me, I don’t need an app to be watching for those particular deliveries (donations of thick-crust cheese and pepperoni, well done, gladly accepted!)

Yes, the installer gave us tips for minimizing all the nuisance notifications, but spoiler alert, the tips haven’t helped. Yes, I could totally turn the alerts off. Then what was the point of getting the contraptions in the first place? Good question!

So if I seem a little blurry-eyed on many a morning, if I keep checking my watch as another alert blazes through, you now know what’s going on. It’s just my head Ringing.

(Added note: I have received approximately 14 alerts while writing this blog. Ouch!)

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