June 21, 2020

Dear Everyone, 

Cindy and I just got back from a Father’s Day brunch at Northmoor, where we joined Andy and Gail to have a meal with Roger.  There were few people dining (outside, with table 6 feet apart), and few golfers also.  The weather was excellent. The menu had about ten possible entrees, and a fixed appetizer (yogurt parfait) and dessert (vanilla ice cream and cookies).  I had a crab quiche on a spinach salad.  There was a fruit plate on the side, and I had also ordered a side of potato pancakes for the table.  Cindy had scrambled egg tacos with cheese that were also supposed to have chorizo, but we think the order was messed up.  I also had a gin martini (why are martini glasses such a strange shape?), and so felt sleepy while driving home (the altered sleep habits of middle age are no help either).  I took a nap when we returned home.  Dad got a bottle of grey Goose vodka, and some cards. 

Yesterday I was at an investment committee meeting by zoom which worked fairly well.  We have lost money over the last three months, but not as much as the indices.  It could be a good time to invest now.  But it could also be bad.  Afterwards I had a zoom aikido class, and later in the afternoon went to Jami Walloch’s for 75 minutes of circuit training followed by beer.  We saw Jami socially the previous evening when Cindy and I joined him, Carolyn, and his son Nate at Imperial Oak.  There was an ok smokehouse food truck, and as usual, interesting beers. We also went to Jami’s house with Robbie the previous weekend.  There were six other dogs (Jami has three, and his kids have three).  The dogs all romped around, although Robbie spent most of his time just hanging out.  He is a very mellow little fellow.

Robbie taking a sun bath

Pooped out after the Walloch's (frankly, he looks like this most of the time)

Work is still pretty slow, maybe about 50% of our pre-Covid workload.  We have construction guys in our office space now, because we are converting some of the area into new offices.  We are short one office space since we are getting my replacement in for six months before I go part-time (or full time) retirement.  It was unclear if they were going to begin work this year because of the virus, but it looks like the new offices will be done just in time.  We are losing a small library / multi-headed microscope area - - space that was completely underused.  No one needs a library in medicine anymore; all of the material is online.  I have a bunch of texts and atlases in my office, and I only refer to a couple of them occasionally.  I pretty much always use Dr. Google.  The multi-headed scope is being moved to another area.  We use this when teams of oncologists or other clinicians  want to view slides with us.  It was shoe-horned into its old space, and only 3 of the 5 possible seats were really usable.  On the other hand, our indispensable assistants Pam and Nancy are also going to have to move their work spaces to something different and smaller.  They are not too happy about it.

I did have an interesting case this week.  It was a patient who had had a grade 3 meningioma (most meningiomas are benign, and only cause problems because they occupy valuable brain space, a grade 3 meningioma is actively invasive, and bad news, but luckily very rare).  The patient had the tumor resected 8 months ago, and then had received radiotherapy - - all standard.  However, six months after therapy, they developed radiation necrosis (RN), an unfortunate consequence of treatment.  Usually RN occurs a couple of years after therapy, and so the treating neurologist wanted a second look at the radiation necrosis, and the slides were sent to me.  I definitely saw RN, but some of the vessels looked a little funny to me.  I ordered a special stain called Congo Red (which I would not have, except the neurologist had alerted me to giving this case a second look), and was surprised to find that some of the vessels had amyloid deposits in them.  I don’t want to get into what amyloid is, except to say that it is bad, and maybe caused the patient to bleed and infarct in their brain.  The interesting question is whether the patient already had amyloid vessels, which caused the early onset of RN, or on the other hand if the RN caused the amyloid to be formed and deposited (perhaps the patient had a genetic predilection to making amyloid.).  Too bad I am not at an academic institution with lots of archival material and residents eager to make themselves famous.  I did share my thoughts with my colleague Peter Pytel at University of Chicago; maybe he can follow up on it.

Jasper and Vivian appear to have settled in to Hyde Park.  They bought a window unit air conditioner for extra comfort.  Cindy and I will have to try to meet them in Chinatown soonish if possible.

I finally got the first season of The Wire out from the library.  Everyone and everything appears dysfunctional.  I also watched The Gentleman, a film by Guy Ritchie similar to his two previous comedy crime capers.  I enjoyed it.  Right now we are holding onto Ford vs Ferrari.

Love, H.