letter may 8 2011

Dear Everyone,

I have been putting off writing this letter for a week now. It’s about a week since Uncle Howard died. Wednesday was his funeral service. It started with a private ceremony at Sunset Ridge Park in Kenosha on a cool, sunny spring day. Almost all of the grandchildren had something to say. The rabbi spoke and sang, and placed his ashes into a small hole. Everyone then shoveled some dirt in. We drove to the Kenosha Country Club, where we had a buffet lunch, and family members reminisced about How. Many tried, and failed, to recapitulate that unique Uncle Howard accent. Then we drove to Carthage College, where there was a large public ceremony at the chapel. There were well over 500 people. We took a short walk to a meeting hall, where Betsy and LuSalMi stood in a receiving line for over 3 hours. After this there was a dinner at Betsy’s house, but I went back to Hinsdale. Everyone had good memories of Uncle Howard. I have devoted most of my life to forgetting as much as possible, so I didn’t have much to add to the collection of stories. I remember trying to play Frisbee in his backyard. I remember having discussions with him (I could never really have an argument with Howard) about the futility of the media. Howard was always considered so charming, but I think the real reason behind this was that Howard was always genuinely interested in listening to people, without any ulterior motive. That, coupled with his gentleness, made him so memorable. We will all miss him.

Today was Mother’s Day, so I made my annual trek up to Highland Park to bird the Skokie Lagoons with Mom. First I had to drive south to Worth to drop Jasper off to his Iaido class. Today was the first time he wore his hakama and dogi top. I’ll try to get some pictures of him eventually, though I think he should shave his head into a topknot. Barbara and I saw about 15 warbler species, a couple of vireos, herons, haws, terns, geese, ducks, orioles, etc. It was a pretty good outing. We were going to go to the Botanic Gardens, but there was a blocks-long tie up on County Line road, so we went straight home. We had a late brunch prepared by Gail and Cindy (Cindy drove up separately with the kids [after picking Jasper up]). We had the usual suspects – bagels, nova, etc.

Last weekend Nicola went to the Hinsdale Central prom. Saturday evening, after a photo shoot with her group, she went to school where all of the kids took buses to Navy Pier for dinner and dancing. Afterwards they went on a cruise on Lake Michigan. They took the bus back to school, arriving around 4am, and Nicola stayed the remainder of the night at her friend Emily’s. She came back to the house sometime in the afternoon on Sunday. I know she has pictures of her dress on Facebook, it was a dark teal satiny looking thing.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Lutheran General to give a grand Rounds presentation on pediatric congenital muscle diseases, like muscular dystrophy. Sadly, just as I was to give my portion of the talk (the first ½ was given by the pediatric geneticist), the bulb to the projector blew out. It’s pretty hard to give a talk about pathology when you don’t have the photos to show “Uh, well, this slide shows some muscle fibers with a green stain, and these little red bits in some of the cells indicate a mitochondrial disorder”, or “These light pink areas in this picture indicate ongoing fibrosis”. It was like listening to a ventriloquist dummy on a radio program. Actually, The most important parts of my talk I hope I was able to convey without pictures, to whit, 10 muscle biopsy should be the last thing you do, and 2) if you must get a muscle biopsy, make sure you put your name and phone number on the requisition so I can call you to discuss the case.

I did have one case I royally messed up at Christ a bit ago, a late middle-aged man with shortness of breath and pulmonary infiltrates by X-ray. I got a couple of lung wedge biopsies (triangular fragments of lung, a bit smaller than a hamentashen). I thought the biopsies looked absolutely normal, and I showed them around to a couple of pathologists in-house who agreed. The patient was not getting any better, so we sent the case to some lung experts at Mayo (Arizona). To our surprise, they were able to diagnose the tissue with an intravascular lymphoma. They performed a special stain on the tissue to reveal malignant lymphocytes throughout the intra-alveolar capillary network. They sent the slides back, and without the special stain, I still would never make the diagnosis. I don’t know how they came up with the idea of a lymphoma in the first place. Luckily, no harm was done to the patient, other than a couple of days of delay. Good thing there are experts out there!

I read a pretty interesting book lately, called The Unnamed http://www.amazon.com/Unnamed-Joshua-Ferris/dp/0316034002/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1304892403&sr=8-1 . This was easy to read, well written, and not what you would expect. Clearly, the main character’s affliction is a metaphor - - but a metaphor for what? Consumer culture? The culture of Ego? Addiction? Disease? I liked it. Barbara has lent me a highly rated history of Eastern Europe between the World Wars. Stalin and Hitler killed a lot of people (15 million?). This point is put across in the first few pages, and I don’t know what else the book will show, other than a lot of evidence that this atrocity occurred. We have also seen some good movies lately, including “The Ghostwriter”, which I quite liked until the last twenty minutes, where it veered past the line of suspension of disbelief, and a British movie “In The Loop”, a satire of Tony Blair’s government in 2003. The man who plays the prime minister’s chief strategist has an unbelievably filthy mouth. Sort of funny.

Love, H.