Listening to John Prine’s Spotify channel last night got me thinking about a project I started years ago and now might be about time to deploy. I’ll link John’s song about this at the end, but first let me relate the details.
From my birth I’ve been lucky. After a while you wonder what the pattern means.
Everyone to whom I’ve described my June 2022 accident – especially those who looked at the crash pictures – say I’m lucky to be alive. I suppose so, and I’m very grateful.
But luck has followed me my entire life
I’m lucky my birth mother, 19 and unwed, chose to carry me and put me up for adoption. I’m lucky a vibrant and loving “Dutch couple” went and had that lawyer make me theirs.
I’m lucky that same couple, and their families, showered me with affection, support, and all things material as they saw me as their much-wanted child. The spoiling continued into my adult years, fading only as most of them died off.
I’m lucky for my father’s success at Fisher Body, which kept him up and supplied his little family with a more than comfortable life.
I can’t say I was too lucky to have lived through unexpected sudden premature deaths of at least 4 close family members – include my mother – before I hit my teens. But it helped me learn early to deal with loss and cherish ever more those who were still around.
I was unbelievably lucky that my mom had a younger sister, my dear Aunt Dorie, who always doted on me and stepped in to provide support, encouragement, guidance, and ever more spoiling after my mother died. A nurse, her gentle nudges of me toward medicine probably were responsible for making me a doctor.
I was lucky Dad secured me a summer job at his plant, giving me not only something to do in the summer (and working with working class folks), but the very real earnings from that job, coupled with extreme savings, paid for all my expenses at U of M.
Getting into U of M was no luck. Grades and test scores assured that. But luck kept me from drowning into the seductive hippie way (eventually) and for flipping me back to science classes when the pre-law/poli sci thing wasn’t working out.
I was lucky to have an academic advisor suggest to me that I pursue a masters program instead of wiling away in undergrad classes as I waited to see what happened with med school. Because of my late decision to pursue med school. I had a year after graduation to fill as I secured my MCATs and buffed up my application.
Yes, I was very lucky to get into med school. Few of the schools to which I applied even offered an interview. Visiting the prestigious University of Chicago, the Dean of Students (who loved student athletes) sized me up and asked if I played basketball. “IM” (e.g. intramural) I said. To this day, I believe he heard “I am”. Regardless, my acceptance letter was in the mail the next week.
At U of C, I was lucky to have such attendings as “Fatty” Lou Cohen, Leon Resnekov, Jim Boyer, Leif Sorenson, Sam Refetoff, “Albino” Baker and Irv Rosenberg (whom I learned years later was uncle to my brother-in-law Bob’s first wife). They recognized my talents, encouraged me to develop them, gave me direction and support, and pushed me to become the best doctor I could be, not an urge I felt entering med school. All my patients need to thank them.
Luck landed me in St Louis, at the great Barnes Hospital. Blame the match computer. I had the BS flowing when I interviewed there with pulmonologist Dr. Bob Bruce, who must have bought it. When I made the call from London on March 15 to learn where the match computer had put me, it was Barnes, my 4th choice. My response to the news “no shit!”. None of the other 9 programs I visited sent me a “magic letter” saying they wanted me. Such letters are directed to candidates the program really wanted but passed over in the match
I must have had a guardian angel watching over me at Barnes for all the trouble I got into. There were plenty of earthly St. Louis angels about who seemed to like tall geeky house officers
I should even find it lucky that my hard-assed chief of Medicine Dave Kipnis chose to punish some of my transgressions by withholding his approval for me to sit for boards pending proof of successful completion of a year of employment followed by a letter from my supervisor stating I was of good character. Throw me in that briar patch!
The jobs I cobbled together from previous moonlighting paid me 4 times as much as I earned as a resident for far fewer hours worked. My building moved me to a 16th floor penthouse overlooking Forest Park, where I entertained some lovely angels. I’d signed up for my fellowship at Michigan just as that extra year started, so I felt secure. Giles Bole at U of M, one of the only 4 institutions I’d visited, offered me a post. Barnes, UCSF, and Hopkins all passed. Giles told be he’d chosen to ignore Bevra Hahn’s letter, which was quite negative. She was the star rheumatologist at Barnes, and an inspiration to many. 5 of my class of 30 chose to go into rheumatology. While Bevra was probably one who tipped me to a future in rheumatology, and I thought I’d performed well on her service, I had the habit of leaving her Monday PM rounds before they were finished so I could make my moonlighting job at Christian NE up north in Florissant. Another stroke of luck that Giles would ignore that blot. I think I validated his opinion, as he offered me a faculty post a year and a half later. UofM was full of great role models, old (Giles, Bill Castor, Armin Good, George Thompson) and young (Tommy Palella, Joe McCune, Tom Schnitzer). Tom took me into his virology lab, where my greatest stroke of luck occurred. Tom mused with Tim White of Kinesiology what might happen if the mice I was making polymyositic with reovirus were exercised. Tom arranged a meeting with Tim’s PhD student who knew how to exercise rodents. Tall, dark, smart, and lovely, she says she fell for the white coat and the line of talk about polymyositis. We’ve been inseparable since, even if the project went nowhere. It’s all been gravy.
I didn’t know when I landed at UofM their department of Medicine was being run by a young hotshot up from Duke, Bill Kelley. Bill never saw a boundary he didn’t want to push. A rheumatologist himself, he saw his specialty as needing to adopt “certain technical procedures appropriate to our specialty”, particularly arthroscopy. That notion was in place before I arrived, but when Tommy Palella, his protégée, introduced me to him, he saw his point man for the project. I thought he’d been impressed by my smarts when I presented a case of Brucellosis I’d diagnosed, but his son Mark, then an intern on my service my second year on faculty, said the main attraction was size. I was 6’8” tall. Mark said that according to his dad, “orthopods always respect size”. Conveniently, Bill’s first fellow at Duke was a guy named Bill Arnold, who’d moved into private practice after tiring of purine research at U Illinois. Bill had partnered with a Northwestern orthopedist to learn arthroscopy, and was doing it independently in Chicago. So off I went for a year with Bill to learn the craft. It wasn’t the smoothest path, but life as a pioneer led to papers, courses, international speaking engagements, and a lifetime as the “scopydoc”, even though I finally stopped doing it in 2001.
It was hard to pull away for that year in Chicago. The May before I left Kathy and I went house shopping with Gail Kimball, wife of Olympic diving coach Dick. On about our 3rd day out, we happened on a house on Harbal Drive, just listed. We put a deposit on the house that day, and eventually got it, although it was in a tax lien and penalty mess from the then current owner. Still, a true stroke of luck. We’d move in in August, Kathy holding down the fort while I came home on weekends. It’s worked out, undergoing renovations during the first Gulf War, then again in 04-’05, when we completely moved out for a year. We love it, and would live nowhere else. It means living in the “People’s Republic of Ann Arbor”, but it’s possible to look past the politics and enjoy the many other features that Tree Town offers. Whether I’d get to stay in Ann Arbor was touch-and-go for a while. I was hired on the tenure track, meaning I’d have 7 years to publish and establish a national reputation. I was kinda slow at the beginning and Tommy had to petition for an extension, based on the fact I’d been hired as instructor but spent that first year acting as a trainee in Chicago. I finally got some papers published and satisfied the promotions committee. Another lucky break. I’ve lived in Ann Arbor all but 8 of the past nearly 55 years. We both bleed blue, and still love our University, even if it doesn’t love us back.
At home, I enjoy the consequences of taking my adoption papers to a PI and ending up with 4 brothers, 6 sisters, and 2 living parents. How lucky is that, to have a brand new family? With my new mom, dad, and 2 sisters now passed, I’ve known loss, but the rest are there.
With time at home, I’ve managed to reconnect with friends from back in the day. Organizing the Zooms for my high school class to connect during the dark times of COVID, I saw some faces that had changed just a little bit. That’s very lucky. I’ve reconnected with friends from the cradle to post-retirement times. Yes, it can take some effort to reach out, but I feel very lucky that these old friends still remember and like me. Relationships are everything.
In the 80s, Purina shot several short films about my life, selecting a charming bulldog – “Ike- the Lucky Dog” – to play my part (1). He still has quite a following.
And ya know you’ve made it when John Prine records a song for you (2).
As life goes on, I relish every morning I wake up. If you need a soundtrack as you go along this same path, listen to more John Prine.
References
- The TV Madman. Lucky Dog Food – Ike The Lucky Dog (1986). YouTube. https://youtu.be/dSdl5hjG7-E?si=pMdxmfTt7wBGv7P8
- Boot Leg. John Prine – How Lucky (Live 2013) Stereo Sound. YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fw0rhcTgz8
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