Dear everyone,
I have had a whole week of retirement! I don’t want to count the week before this
one, because I was taking my second of three courses in Epic. Somehow, I managed to pass, so now I am a
certified Physician Builder. I would say
that and $2.50 would get me on the bus, but they are sending me a certificate,
as well as a leatherman (I have tools
now, get it). I still have yet to take the course that is more specific to the
pathology system in March, but I have been communicating with our Epic
managers, and I hope to get some changes moving through the system. Next week I am having a couple of zoom
sessions (well, really Microsoft conferencing app) with the Illinois
pathologists on how to do slightly more advanced functions like setting up
filters, natural language searching. I
would like some of the other pathologists to also present any tricks they may
have figured out, but so far there are no takers. One big problem I foresee is that any large
scale changes will also need to be approved by all of the Wisconsin based
pathologists. So far there is no kind of
steering committee with members of both groups; something I find
incomprehensible, since the rollout of this system has already been about 12
months. No wonder there are functions
that aren’t optimal.
What else have I been doing?
Because of Covid, my gym is essentially closed. It was running from mid-July up to
mid-November, afterwards they closed the locker rooms except for the bathroom,
and required mask wearing 100% of the time.
So, we just put our membership on hold until June, and I literally
dusted off my 30 year old Nordic Track, which I have not used regularly for 15
years. It still works fine, and I am
developing a habit of putting Robbie out in the morning, and then exercising
for 45 minutes or so. I am also going to
Jami Walloch’s house to lift weights in his basement. Speaking of Jami, he and his wife Carolyn
were in Tennessee last weekend to visit her brothers. Just as they were packing the car up to leave
on Tuesday, Jami suddenly started to have trouble with words and numbers. He knew he was having a stroke. Fortunately, they were close to a stroke
center, and he was getting a TPA infusion within two hours of his
symptoms. Most striking was his
inability to understand numbers. He
could look at them, and knew what they were, but he couldn’t make sense of a
calendar or his blood pressure numbers.
Lucky for him it was an embolic stroke (something lodged up in his
brain), and not a hemorrhagic one from a small brain blood vessel breaking. Not unexpectedly, the ischemic area is in his
left parietal-occipital area, which probably is where most people store
abstract concepts like math. Although
the CT scan was negative for bleeding, there was some evidence that he may have
had a few small silent strokes in the past.
Anyway, he recovered almost complete function within a day, and I was lifting
with him yesterday. It looks like he
will be a on a blood thinner, a statin, and some anti-hypertensive medications
for the future. He does have a family
history of vascular brain events.
I have also been reading, doing tai chi (with some extra classes
on tai chi sword and martial applications thrown in; I also hope that Bill
Grizzle, my immediate instructor, can start coming out to the house so we can
work on our ‘push hands’ two man practice), aikido, watching some MasterClass
videos, as well as lectures by Professor Sapolsky
at Stanford on Evolutionary sociobiology (these are interesting, but I know
most of the material). Sapolsky also
recommended a book called Chaos
which I read. It is interesting, but I
am not sure how he will apply it to the class.
My best take away from reading this book is that the universe is only
deterministic between certain boundaries, so some amount of free will may be
possible. There’s still hope for us! I
have also been trying to write stuff and doing more cooking. Last week I bought some masa harina and
made ‘tamale pie’ - - basically tamale style dough on the bottom of a 9 x 9
pan, a layer of filling, and then another layer of dough, then baked in a bain marie for about an
hour. Delicious, and really easy. You could make it vegetarian and gluten
free! Because I had all of this masa
flour, I tried my hand at tortillas. Two
batches and about 20 tortillas later I think I almost have the hang of it, but
I don’t think I will ever have the skills of an abuela. I also made chicken
tortilla soup.
I also have been watching a little more TV than usual, the 2nd
season of Cobra Kai, a French show that refers to Arsene Lupin (I am a sucker
for anything AS related), a biographical series about the Monty Python group,
and something about the history of swear words.
I have to leave in a minute to drive to 1261 to watch the
Browns – Chiefs game. Both the Steelers
and Bears lost their first playoff game.
We viewed this at Roger’s, and Owen made a delicious dinner of fried
hamburgers, roasted potatoes and salad.
After the game this evening, the Buccaneers (Tom Brady) will play the
Saints (Drew Brees). Yesterday, Scott
Simon, the announcer on NPR’s weekend edition said that Brees would be
refreshed, since he essentially had the prior weekend off, because he had
played the Bears! Boo! Fake News! I think Chicagoans should hold an
insurrection against NPR headquarters in Washington DC. I’m aghast, I’m sure like most of you, about
the events of the past weeks in our capital.
We have become a crappy Eastern European country - - I blame
Melania. (Did you know a new museum
opened up in Rome devoted to Caligula’s
palace? Did you know that Caligula
had multiple wives, and the last was named Milonia? Does reincarnation exist?). Joking aside, there are millions of people
who have bought into the lies of Trump and his ilk. This problem is years in the making, and is
not going to go away soon. Many of the Republican
presidents (and other pols) over the last sixty years have been scoundrels or
worse. I don’t understand why people have
been voting for them.
Love, H
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