phenomenalplace

When I was in training as a Resident and a Fellow, I remember taking only a couple of sick days over the entire 6-year period. And I had to stay home because I could not stop praying to the porcelain Goddess during a bout of a particularly nasty flu, despite a vaccination. I actually took pride in my health record, and attributed it directly to being rather sickly as a child. Well, not really sickly; I just contracted all of the childhood illnesses that prevailed at the time in my geography. Yes, I spent my childhood in Odessa, Ukraine, where I got vaccinated against polio and smallpox, but not against measles, mumps, rubella, chicken pox, whooping cough or any other diseases that our children in the West will never contract. So, every couple of months I would succumb and have to stay home with a fever and a rash, and my mother would call my pediatrician who would come and visit me in our home promptly to examine me and, most of the time, reassure my mother that I would likely survive ...

My father passed away about two weeks ago after battling a brain tumor for some time. Initially diagnosed with an extensive inoperable mass one and one-half years ago, upon presenting with a focal seizure, he did well with only one medication for seizure control for about ten months. Around Christmas of 2009, however, he landed in the hospital in status epilepticus that took three days to control. After these days of florid hallucinations alternating with pharmacologically achieved stupor, he came out of it remarkably cognitively intact, still able to quote poetry and sing Italian opera arias in their entirety. Although he was now unable to use his legs, he eagerly accepted the prospect of getting back on his feet by working hard in physical therapy. And though this never came to be, he managed to survive for additional seven months. But my Dad was not your average guy. A survivor of World War II, an immigrant from the Soviet Union, a retired professor of mechanical engineering, he wa...