Can We Use This Word? The New York Times and Wordle Say No But I Say We Must.

A lot of people are unhappy with the New York Times acquiring Wordle, the trendy daily word game. My great ChicagoNow fellow blogger Howard Moore reminds us that this is just a game, and not to get too worked up about how difficult the words seem to have become.

I ran into a different issue the other day. As one of my five-letter guesses, I entered the word “Slave.” The omnipotent Wordle moderator immediately informed me that my attempt was Not in the Word List.

Excuse me? The word is present in Merriam-Webster, with multiple definitions including “a person held in forced servitude.” Other definitions include the use of the word in tech environments.

But a little research indicates that certain words, deemed by the Times as offensive, have now been removed from the Wordle word list. “Slave” is apparently on the offensive list. Thou shalt not use it.

And in this case, I don’t get it. Which just shows my ignorance. Apparently, there has been a debate for years about whether the word should no longer be used. Former Trib columnist Eric Zorn devoted a column to the controversy in 2021. The word is a “needlessly dehumanizing word to describe a person who was in bondage.”

But isn’t that the point? Calling a slave a slave exactly points out the dehumanization that slavery was. Euphemistically dancing around it with terms such as “enslaved person” just doesn’t convey the horror of the stain on our history.

I have a second point of reference. Next month, I will be celebrating Passover. I will lead my family’s Seder, in which we will read from the Haggadah. After a few blessings, we will read (and chant) Avadim Hayenu. “We were slaves to Pharoah in Egypt.”

The harsh words are blunt and are used with other symbols (charoseth–a chopped nuts and apple mixture representing the mortar used during forced construction work, maror–bitter herbs to remind us of the bitterness of slave life) because we never want to forget. Indeed, the theme running throughout the Seder is to pass the history from generation to generation.

Just as the more recent ancestors of many of us who died in World War II concentration camps were not “people ensnared by a Nazi policy,” but rather murder victims, slaves were slaves. Let the horror of the word speak on our behalf, and may we never forget.

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A Morning Moon Prayer

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The Morning Moon Glows Through the Clouds

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The morning moon glimmers so low in the West,
 Before the sun rises, the sky to contest.
 What will the day bring, the moon seems to say.
 As all ‘cross the world, do the herky-jerky ballet.

 Will Covid come lurking, waiting behind all our masks,
 And make us think twice before every day tasks?
 Or have all our jabs, and Ivermectin convinced us,
 That our worries are gone, no need for this fear fuss.

 Which Russian will step up, to grab our attention?
 The leader? The skater? It’s beyond comprehension.
 That a fifteen year old girl who’s charged with drug doping,
 Distracts us from Putin, while the Ukraine he’s groping.

 I read Trump’s finances might go down the toilet,
 We can savor the moment, and really enjoy it.
 But what does it matter when millions adore him,
 I’ll go look for a cave, to hide and explore in.

 The Senate and House, the foundations of Congress,
 Are masters of nothing, they really could care less,
 About all the aspects in which the country is lacking,
 They just want your dollars, they just want your backing.

 The Super Bowl’s over, the Rams are the winners,
 While the Bears here in town, just hire beginners.
 The half-time display was all hip-hop and glamour,
 Love Snoop Dog, Love Fifty, but where’s Kanye and Hammer?

 And baseball is stranded with no games approaching,
 The negotiating teams could sure use some coaching.
 When zillionaires squabble over dividing the big bucks,
 It’s paying fans in the stands who feel like the stiffed schmucks.

 We Wordle our way to achieve adulation,
 When our score is the lowest we post the citation.
 Do you start with "arise" or do you start with some other?
The Times of New York can now track like Big Brother.
 

 Well, the climate's still heating, there’s no easy solution.
 We’ve got crime, we’ve got hate, we’ve got water pollution.
 But the moon as it shines, on today’s early morning
 Says the sun will rise soon, let's pray a good day's aborning.

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A Valentine’s Day List So That I Always Remember

I celebrate my Valentine’s Day with…

A dog whisperer who can turn a 40 lb Labradoodle into a lap dog.
A friend who charges nothing for interior design advice.
A volunteer who can’t leave the healthcare environment behind.
A chef who knows how to complement a delicious meal with a colorful plate.
A Neil Diamond super fan, even if I am the only one who ever wears a Neil Diamond concert tee shirt.
A community leader, always striving for improvement and beautification of the world around her.
A needle-pointer extraordinaire, for whom the photographs of her handiwork above cannot begin to demonstrate the exquisite quality and magnificence of her work, or the love she pours into each canvas, each embellishment, and each and every stitch. (The hearts are from me!)
A Nana whose grandchildren adore her.
A mother who will drop everything to help her kids.
The woman who is my wife of 43 years, the love of my life, my soulmate, my duet-partner. The woman who shares my brain.

Just remember, through it all, I Got You, Babe.

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Lights at the End of the Tunnel. Of Moon Shots and Medicine.

As I glanced through the obituaries the other day (yes, I have reached that stage in my life) I noticed a death notice with funeral arrangements for an oncologist I worked with twenty years ago. Of course I was saddened to hear of his passing, but what immediately came to mind was a conversation with a different oncologist that I overheard a long, long time ago–1976, to be precise.

It was the very beginning of my 2nd year at the University of Illinois School of Medicine. M1 Year had been spent buried in textbooks and anatomy lab, but with the onset of M2 Year, our class had (very limited) entre into the clinical world.

We were placed in groups of four, and each week every group had a pair of three-hour sessions in a clinician’s office. My group’s assigned physician was a busy oncologist who tolerated our being in his office but didn’t let us do much with his patients, and didn’t offer much insight either. But at least we got the vibe of being in the same general vicinity as living, breathing, patients.

At the end of one Tuesday session, our oncologist told us not to show up for that week’s Thursday session, as the office would be closed while he attended a funeral.

“Do you go to all your patient’s funerals?” the boldest of our foursome of M2s asked.

“I don’t go to ANY of them,” was the rather brusque reply.

A couple of that oncologist’s attitudes were transmitted to us in that brief exchange. “First,” he was conveying to us, “as a physician, you must keep your distance from your patients. Medicine is your occupation, maybe even your passion, but the patients are not your friends.”

“Second,” he seemed to be saying “I am an oncologist. All my patients die.”

As I said, that was a long, long time ago. I followed my talents to a medical field where I have so little patient contact that there is little risk of patients becoming my friends. Instead many of my friends have become my “patients”, the downside of being a 60-something prostate pathologist with a cadre of friends my own age.

But more importantly, oncologists no longer need to feel that their patients will die from their disease. Tumor screening (colonoscopy, mammography), leading to early cancer diagnosis, the use of genetic evaluation of tumors to guide therapy, the fantastic advances in understanding tumor immunology-these are wondrous tools that have made many cancers curable or converted them to chronic, treatable, conditions rather than rapidly lethal nightmares.

We aren’t at cancer nirvana yet. Treatments are still too expensive, life-style factors still put patients at risk. Some malignancies still baffle the best experts.

But perhaps in my lifetime, the Cancer Moonshot will succeed. And when an oncologist says “I don’t go to cancer patient’s funerals” it will be because there are none.

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We Save Lives (and I Apologize)

Words have an impact. Whether the speaker is a politician, an entertainer, or a blogger, they must think about the words they choose–and choose carefully. I try to do that, but despite my scrupulous care, I made a blunder in my word choices in a previous blog and I want to apologize for it.

You may recall my last posting conveyed some thoughts on my profession, ranging from Sherlock Holmes to surgeon’s “fingerprints. And in a section dealing with statistics, I said “Some days every prostate I look at will be malignant and I feel like Dr. Death.”

I really should have known better. Within a few hours of posting, I received the following from Marty, a friend, and prostate cancer warrior:

What?

No, no. Better to realize you are giving these men (myself included!) a 2nd chance at life as they and their doctors learn that they now need to enter the “treatment phase” of their now discovered prostate cancer.
And B’ruch HaShem may that treatment extend their lives for many productive years to come!

We MUST stay positive.

Marty was so right. The diagnosis of prostate cancer is absolutely not a death sentence. By far, most men diagnosed with prostatic cancer will live long and fruitful lives, enjoying careers, family, and free time.

So instead of referring to myself as Dr. Death, I should have chosen an honorific like Dr. Decision Tree (I know, I know, it doesn’t have much zing.) My diagnosis is a key piece of the data set that guides the patient and his medical team as to whether to treat (surgery, radiation, hormonal modulation, immunotherapy) or not to treat (active surveillance) the patient’s cancer.

(And while we are talking about prostate cancer, here is my annual plug for PSA testing. Ask your physician if it is right for you and the men in your life.)

Marty, you have improved my mindset. I will watch my words with the focus of a laser beam. You reminded me that, as one of my previous partners used to say, “We are pathologists. We save lives!”

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Pearls for the People From a Prostate Pathologist

A tray of prostate biopsy slides is ready for microscopic review.

As my career in pathology heads toward the home stretch, some pearls I have picked up along the way, particularly during the last 17 years as a prostate pathologist.

I Can Name That Surgeon in 3 Cores

You all know that no two people have the same exact fingerprints or DNA. I can tell you that no two surgeons send the same exact prostate biopsies.

I can look at a case and know right away who the urologist is. Fourteen cores? That tells me this case is from Dr. B. A ten-pack? Got to be Dr. M. Lots and lots of cores from every location in the prostate? Dr. Y must be the urologist of the day. Long, thick cores come from Doc A, while Doc B sends more fragmented specimens. Sixty different urologists, sixty different biopsy “fingerprints.”

It’s Not Over Until the …

I sometimes get a bit exasperated looking at 15 or twenty prostate biopsy cores from a patient, all of which look perfectly normal; well-formed acini with lots of basal cells, bland stroma, nice even spacing.

But today I got a reminder why I need to look carefully at each and every one of those cores, all the way to the end. In two consecutive cases, I found nothing, nothing, nothing, until the final core in each case demonstrated prostate cancer. And not the potentially insignificant Gleason 3+3 kind, but high-grade cancers that will require treatment to preserve the patient’s health and hopefully prevent a cancer death. It’s humbling to realize that the 12th biopsy found what the first 11 didn’t.

Statistically, Things Tend To Return To The Mean

There is a saying in baseball that a ballplayer’s batting average is going to match the numbers on the back of his baseball card. A .250 hitter might go on a hot streak, but eventually, he is going to go back to being a .250 hitter.

It’s like that in the lab, too. Some days every prostate I look at will be malignant and I feel like Dr. Death. Other times, every case is benign, and while that is great for the patients, I worry that I am missing things, that I have forgotten what prostate cancer looks like under the microscope. But over time, it all evens out. From month to month, the percentage of cases I diagnose as cancer is the same. The diagnostic peaks and valleys cancel each other out. Statistics just don’t lie.

Whatever Remains…

Sherlock Holmes once said, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Over a long career, I have realized that a pathologist’s most valuable skill is recognizing the many faces of non-cancer. While scanning prostate tissue, my brain automatically eliminates the benign, the inflamed, the reactive.

Whatever remains is where my concentration needs to be focused. Those areas might not be malignant, but I need to look at them carefully to make sure they aren’t. When in doubt, a second look the next morning, or a special stain, or a consultation with my colleagues will guide me to the truth. The Holmesian method of diagnostics.

I am sure I have learned a few other things, but I will save them for another snowy day.

This blog is the opinion of the author and not UroPartners LLC.

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Have You Done Your Wordle Yet?

It is saturating. I have never been part of a trend that has spread this fast. Forget Ukraine, Voter’s Rights, the Goulding of Aaron Rodgers. This is all anyone wants to talk about.

Just give me my Wordle and go away for ten or twenty or thirty minutes. I will let you know when I have finished and you can disturb me once again.

I had never heard of Wordle until about two weeks ago when I read a New York Times article describing the newest fad. An online game, the official version of which can only be played one time a day, it is best described as Mastermind for word geeks.

Guess a five-letter word by guessing other five-letter words and seeing what letters match up with the secret word. It is not all chance. There is some logic involved and a decent vocabulary and knowledge of letter frequencies in words help in solving the puzzle.

The ‘net abounds with sites that tell you the best word to start with. I ignore those. I prefer to look around the room and pick the first object I see with a five-letter name. Or close my eyes and pick the first five-letter word that pops to mind. To me, that is more fun than using someone else’s prescribed starter.

Six misses and you are done for the day. Get it right in less than 6 attempts and you get…just about nothing. No balloons, no fireworks, no fanfares. But the one thing you DO get is the chance to post your results to your favorite social media.

And that is the super-spreader Wordle event. Post the little grid that shows how many guesses it took to nail the word of the day and watch the “Comments” pour in. Those in the know applaud your efforts (you got it in two!) or mock you (it took you 6????) And those who don’t know what you are talking about ask questions and are soon hooked. The proliferation of this thing makes Omicron look like a real piker.

Until a vaccine is discovered, I will keep up with the daily challenge. My best effort is solving in two turns (please hold your applause) and I have only totally shanked it once. I usually muddle along in the three to four range.

And I think it is time for today’s game–just leave me alone for the next half-hour.

______________________________________

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Jeopardy! for the Ages…the Senior Ages!

Barb and I take our birthday cards to each other quite seriously. They are always delivered first thing the morning of the day, and always to the same spot in the house. I leave my card for Barb on the kitchen island next to her beloved iPad, and I know exactly three weeks later I will find mine hooked on to my briefcase at the back door, ready to delight me before I head to the lab.

Of course, the content of the card needs to be just right as well, striking the right mood for what our lives are going through each year. The typical formula is loving but not overly mushy, emphasizing our closeness and how lucky we are with our wonderful family.

But this year Barb went a bit off script and she hit the jackpot. The card, pictured above, depicts a game of Senior Jeopardy!, and in case you can’t read it clearly, the name of the contestant on the left is Lester.

For those of you who don’t know, I was a Jeopardy contestant in 1988. My opponents weren’t Fern and Earl…they were Linda (the returning champion) and Neil (the winner of my single match.) But I was really there–and I am still campaigning to be the new permanent Jeopardy! host instead of KenJenningsMayimBialik. After all. unlike Aaron Rodgers, in the last year, I’ve been triple-COVID vaxed, double Pneumo-vaxed, and probably anti-anthrax vaxed, too.

But back to the birthday card. Barb didn’t place a special order for it or hand-write my name in that box. She found it on the rack and knew she had to have it for me.

Besides having my name as contestant #1, the categories are perfect for the “mature” me, almost 35 years past my Jeopardy! prime. “Facts I Forgot, ” “Where I Left My Glasses,” “Summer Sweaters,” “Early Bird Specials,” “Aches and Pains,” and “What Did You Say?”– all part of my daily life. The only categories I would add are “Lyrics to Songs from 1964” and “Back In the Day.” I suppose those might show up in the Double Jeopardy round.

That card is so perfect, Barb says she plans to give it to me every year. And why not–she knows I won’t remember!

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Man-People Take This Music Sh*t Seriously!

So I am a member of a few groups on Facebook. Groups about my old neighborhood, my new neighborhood, my schools, my occupation. And a handful about my love of music.

In one of the groups, people tend to ask questions like “name your favorite bass guitarist,” or “name a song with the letter Q in the title.” On occasion, I will volunteer an answer, and on rarer occasions, I will ask a question. During this past COVID-quiet weekend I asked a question. I didn’t know I was inciting a riot…

My question was pretty straightforward–“Name a song that contains the name of a non-USA city.” As an example, I listed my favorite Warren Zevon number, Lawyers, Guns and Money which includes the lyric “I was gambling in Havana.”

Pretty easy stuff, I thought. Not a trick question, not controversial. To my chagrin, I learned there is nothing in the cyber world that is not controversial. And nothing that can’t make people angry.

Sure, lots of people gave uncomplicated answers. No surprise how many people named Werewolves of London, another Warren Zevon track. Our great distaff vocalists were represented by songs such as Joni Mitchell’s Free Man in Paris (no one mentioned the Neil Diamond version!) And lots of other songs with non-USA cities in either song titles or lyrics were fun to reminisce about. The Comments reached into the many hundreds.

But then the arguments began. Everyone loves The Girl from Ipanema, but is Ipanema a beach, an area, or a city unto itself? Loads of people weighed in on that one–supporting their claims with Google maps and guidebook quotes. At least that debate was peaceful.

The fury rose when many people listed songs naming non-USA countries, but not cities. Songs like Never Been to Spain and Haitian Divorce. I will admit that for the first few minutes, I replied to posters pointing out the error, but after a while, I decided what the heck–let ’em list what they want to list and have fun. It’s not like I am giving away any prizes!

Yet one or two individuals assigned themselves to be the scourages of the list, pointing out every misattributed song, every spelling error, and every country-not-a-city-error.

The vitriol rose to a boil when discussing Back in the USSR, the Beatles rocker from The White Album. When Mr. Blue Pencil incorrectly* told a poster the song didn’t belong on the list, all hell broke loose. Name-calling, cussing, and sacrilegious comments followed in short order. WTF?????

I have learned my lesson. In an effort to avoid furor in the future, I think I will avoid hot-button topics like music in future postings and stick to less controversial topics.

Does anyone want to talk about changing the Senate filibuster rules?

*Moscow is mentioned in the lyrics.

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My Year Of Magical Running

2002. Exactly twenty years ago. We were still reeling from 9/11. Our soldiers were fighting in Afghanistan, but not yet in Iraq. The world was changing. And a switch flipped inside of me. I became The Running Man.

Running was not totally new to me. Either alone or with a couple of friends, I had laced up my New Balances and gone for a 2 or 3-mile run a few times a week for years. I would have some 5K runs marked on the calendar, and once a year I would struggle to finish a 10K race through the ravines of Highland Park.

But I had a few internal “rules.” If I started a run and in the first quarter of a mile it didn’t feel just right– too windy, or too hot, or I was just too sleepy, I would put on the brakes and walk home. And I NEVER ran on consecutive days. It just seemed too tiresome.

What changed in 2002? I don’t really know. Early in my running season, I stopped my slow warm-up trot in front of a neighbor’s house, barely managing 200 yards from home, and decided I had enough for the day. I walked back to our driveway ready to go inside. But before I reached our backdoor a thought came to me. “This quitting is bullshit.” I turned around, tightened my shoelaces, and went for a 3-mile run.

From that day, the urge to run just grew and grew. My “no consecutive days running” rule fell by the wayside. I began to run almost daily. A handheld CD player, loaded with old rockers like “Born to Run” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” downloaded from Napster and burned to disc, became my soundtrack and companion. A beat-up running cap and a belt with two water bottles were my other accessories. And after each run, I made a notation in my spiral notebook

On many workdays, I would spend a half-hour before lunch in the Rehab Department of the hospital striding on my favorite treadmill. I pushed and pushed until I made 4 miles in those 30 minutes. That felt like just the right goal for a not particularly athletic 46-year-old.

The miles added up as I began leaving my running friends in the dust. My racing schedule grew with lots of 5Ks that were now not much of a challenge, as well as longer runs at Northwestern University and Oakton Community College. One race in Des Plaines had to be temporarily halted and restarted after an unscheduled freight train blocked the course. The extra miles didn’t bother me at all.

The Highland Park 10K was looming in September. I knew that this would be the year I would be ready for it. And I was. A long treadmill run the day before had left me loose and energized. I zoomed from the starting line and blazed my way through the first half of the race.

And then it happened. Sharp pain in my right leg. Something I had never felt before. My pace slowed; gingerly, I switched to a walk. I nodded to my friends as they ran past me, puzzled looks on their faces. In the recovery zone, while downing bananas and Carol’s Cookies, I let them know I was in pain.

An exam and bone scan at the hospital the next day revealed two stress fractures in my leg. I had overdone it; I was running on empty, and a winter of rest was in order.

I didn’t totally quit running. But the distances became shorter and the intervals between runs became longer. Last year I finally threw in the towel and gave up running for good. You may see me darting around on my new bike, but my running shoes have been retired. They are in heaven somewhere along with that cherished old CD player. I will listen to “Sweet Child O’ Mine” no more.

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