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Mickey(`the Old Philosopher')Makes Out
Dr. Michael Blackstone
As `the old philosopher' might have put it - Life is a succession of train stations. The trick is to arrive in time to catch the train going to the right destination. For me, these were: medical school, gastroenterology, Chicago and retirement.
Medical School. DMHS had taught me something about my life to come. For a not too smart, homely, beginning to bald, little man I'd need an edge if I were to have a life.
Shortly after arriving in Michigan, I overheard two first year medical students despairing over how hard medical school was, but acknowledging it had its rewards - you got girls even if you were homely. "Hmm," I thought, "that's for me, but could I really get in? Pre-med is hard and you really have to do well. What about med school itself?" I did have one advantage. I could sit still for amazing periods of time and `grind it out.' It worked. Three years later I got into New York Medical College, not the best, but right for me, a problematic med student at best. And I did get girls, especially as an Intern. There was Pat, a Brit. She was hot. But this was 1966 and there was the Doctor Draft. I went to Germany (if you signed up for three years, which I did, you could go anywhere). Pat stayed in Brooklyn.
Between my first and second year I came to Englewood to visit and my parents threw a party for me. There was Amy, whose late father had been a gastroentrologist. The few moments I spent with Amy at the party "knew not time nor place" and gastroentrology took on a magical aura. Nothing came of me and Amy, but gastroentrology became my next destination.
Gastroentorology. Upon my return from Germany in 1968 after only two years (the Army having lost my extension papers - luck was always on my side) I met Barbara, "my flower child" first wife. Also, I got a medical residency at Harlem Hospital and stayed on for a GI traineeship. I had a talent for endoscopy and was able to teach myself a new (at the time) procedure for visualizing the pancreatic and biliary ducts, important in the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. It was hard to learn; only a handful of endoscopists in the U.S. could do it. I sent a letter advertising myself to 100 or so GI programs. At the University of Chicago, a federally funded protocol was being organized to test the newer methods of diagnosing pancreatic cancer and they were looking for someone like me. I got the job and took the train for my next destination, Chicago, where I've lived for the past 34 years.
Chicago Unlike Harlem Hospital, U of C had a real GI section. Most important for my development were visiting Japanese endoscopists we had there at the time, who taught me about the wide spectrum of endoscopic appearances of gastric cancer, the most common GI malignancy in Japan.
These appearances and thousands of others became the basis of the endoscopy atlas I was to write, published in 1984.
About this time, Barbara became interested in starting a family. Charles came along in 1977. He currently designs market research studies and writes postmodern fiction without punctuation or a
plot. I find it hard to read, much less get into. He's married to a local celebrity, Alpana Singh, a master sommelier with her own restaurant show, Check, Please, which is the most watched show on Chicago P.B.S. Four years after Charles (1981), came Elissa who lives with her mom, and principally spends her day blogging on Myspace.
Barbara and I went our separate ways in 1991, and shortly after, Linda came along (1993) via video dating. To understand her accepting me, you'd only have to remember that I was a doctor at U of C, and was a miniature version of (possibly cuter) of her dad. Linda at the time was the HR person for a major advertising agency in Chicago. Since then she's done executive recruiting in a variety of settings.
Maya came along shortly after our marriage. Linda is a Chicago girl with Chicago friends and relatives. We moved to a northwest neighborhood and I experienced a different Chicago from that one around the U. of C. but still only 20 minutes from my seat at Chicago's Lyric Opera.
By the year 2000, I was getting older and the GI section was demanding more from me as far as patient encounters and numbers of procedures performed, as well as better record keeping. Retirement beckoned and I caught the train.
Retirement. We (Linda, Maya and Charles) celebrated my retirement (2002) with three weeks in Paris and Normandy, the result of a house swap with a French family. Upon my return, I started reading classics with a neighbor who teaches fiction writing, and another who is a commodities day trader. I had been given a lifetime library card (my most cherished possession) to U of C's Regenstein Library (4.2 million books) and the bimonthly meeting with my `group' was a stimulus for me to avail myself of the enormous body of literary criticism there is. The group started with the Shakespeare canon, moving on to Spenser, Joyce, Whitman, T.S. Elliot, and Tennessee Williams. The group disbanded when the fiction writer went on to writing the `great American novel.' I've gone on to revenge tragedy and other plays of the early 17th century. There's a ton of them (to use Maya's expression) and I can't get enough. Maya goes to the U of C lab school (where the Obama kids go) which is a half hour or so car trip. I relish the time we spend together listening, for example, to the entire Harry Potter series, as well as Radio Disney (Hannah Montana's "Nobody's Perfect" being my favorite). We have a 4-year-old little white Bichon named "Kitty." I walk two to three times a day and commune with nature.
"So you see, Mickey you've really had a wonderful life," only I didn't need a Clarence to tell me this. I got to all the right destinations, as I hope my DMHS classmates have, as well.
