letter Feb 21 2001

Dear everyone,

I am truly middle-aged now, having been initiated into the wonders of colonoscopy. For those of you who are looking at this in your future, all I can only say that the prep beforehand is a lot worse than the actual procedure. I had a choice of having this at the hospital or at the gastroenterologist’s (GI) private office nearby. I chose the hospital because I could get a coworker to drive me in, letting Cindy stay at home a bit. I was a bit worried about doing this at the hospital, since I guess there would be a greater chance of emergency interruption, but everything went quite smoothly. I made the appointment about a month ago, pre-registered over the phone on Friday, and prepped myself on Sunday (with the ‘delicious’ lemon magnesium citrate method…ugh), and got to the hospital at about 8. Registration took about 5 minutes, intake by a nurse another 20, and then I waited on my gurney for about 40 minutes while the GI finished another case. While waiting I got an IV, an automatic blood pressure cuff, a pulse oximeter and EKG leads placed. Additionally I got some bloodwork done since I lost track of my internist after I moved from Loyola (lipids, liver function, glucose…all pretty good, except my creatinine which was high, probably from dehydration. I need to get it redrawn tomorrow). So, I was pretty hooked up before they wheeled me into the procedure room. I can’t imagine what it feels like to be in the ICU with catheter, central lines, oxygen mask - - I hope it never comes to this for me. I chose my GI doc out of the ones that practice at Christ. I can at least tell the ones who know a polyp when they see it (that is to say, this particular doctor rarely gives me a biopsy with normal tissue.) Additionally, some of the other, older pathologists recommended him. So, I am in the procedure room, joking with him and the nurses, and they put the versed in….and the next thing I know I am waking up in the recovery room, with my angel (Cindy!) walking down the hall to me. Apparently, like others, I was quite chatty on the way home. I don’t recall a thing. I got home and ate something. I know there was at least a banana and tortilla chips. Then I went to bed for about four hours. I have pictures of vaguely tubular structures. I will read the op note at work tomorrow to see what I missed.

This weekend was pretty busy for the kids. Jasper was in a swim meet. He and a 25 year old were the only ones swimming the 200 m. butterfly…Jasper lost by 50 sec. I don’t think I could do a 75! He had some not so great races, but he did improve his time on the 50 free to under 28 seconds. Lucas was in a tennis tournament that had him playing Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, he lost his first match against someone he should have beaten. Then he made his way up to the semi-finals of the dropdown, but the way points are calculated his first opponent made more, even though he lost the next match, and Lucas won the next two. Nicola was also pretty busy. Saturday she went to a poetry workshop in preparation for the Louder Than A Bomb poetry slam, and Sunday a bunch of her friends went downtown to see the musical Starship (http://www.theatreinchicago.com/review.php?playID=4596). All I know is that the production runs over 3 hours, and Cindy had to go pick her up at a friend’s house somewhere near midnight. MTV was covering the production, and Nikki was interviewed. We’ll see if it makes it to the small screen.

The weekend before I was in Highland Park for an investment meeting, and then in the evening all Hinsdaleans went to a Second City fund raising performance at the high school. Someone must have spied out the culture of Hinsdale Central pretty thoroughly, because the performers were able to work a lot of in-jokes into their skits. Later, I managed to be loud enough that one of my audience suggestions made it onto the stage: “defenestration”.

Last week was pretty tough because we had several pathologists out for vacation, and then another colleague had gallbladder surgery. She underestimated the time it would take for recovery, so we were running pretty short-staffed for a couple of days. Cases build up! I just finished a rather elegiac history/biography of the Ephrussi family called The Hare With Amber Eyes by Edmund De Waal. De Waal is a latter day member of this Jewish commodities and banking family (almost as important as the Rothschilds, in fact, there were some marriages between the dynasties), and he traces the history of his family through a collection of Japanese netsuke from the mid 1800’s, when they were purchased by his great-great uncle Charles (one of the models for Proust’s Swann), sent to Vienna as a wedding gift around 1900, miraculously overlooked by the Nazis (you have to read the book to find out how), taken by his great uncle who expatriated to Japan, and then finally to him. The book has overtones of melancholy similar to Sebald. De Waal’s family is no longer Jewish; he doesn’t speak much about the surviving cousins. I also read Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, a real dystopian adventure. We watched the non-sporting section of the Westminster dog show, and were very disappointed by the 4th place showing of the Keeshonds. Why do they poof them up so much!?

Love, H.