FeedMe

Debakey Dies

Dr. Michael Debakey (pictured at right, at age 85) died today, at age 99. He invented the coronary bypass. He performed one on my father. This is the story of how that came to be.

Dad's second heart attack occurred while he was getting an arteriogram, as part of the one-year followup, after his first attack. If you're going to have a heart attack, NYU's cardiac care hospital is a pretty good place to do it.

The doctors wanted to do a bypass. My mother, noting that insurance allows a second opinion, asked a cousin who was in medical school who was that best cardiac surgeon in the country. "The doctor who wrote my text book is pretty good," said my cousin. It was Dr. Michael Debakey.

Most people would seek a local doctor for a second opinion. We weren't rich or famous or well connected, but I don't suppose Mom thought twice about seeking the top name.

Mom wrote two letters: One to Debakey and one to his then-rival and former partner Denton Cooley. A few days later, the phone rang. It was Dr. Debakey. "Will you consult on my husband's case?" she asked. He would. She had them NYU send the records. 

A few days later, he called again and advised a triple bypass. I don't suppose she thought twice before she asked, "Will you do it?" He would. They talked for a while and he asked if she had any questions. She said no, and he said, "That's because you don't know what questions to ask," and he answered all the questions she did not know she had. They were on the phone for an hour and a half.

A few days later, we were in Houston. It was July or August, as I recall. Not a good time to be in Houston. Hot, very hot, and shirt-wringingly humid. I remember that spending hours waiting in a hospital was not so bad, since it was air conditioned.

Debakey put my Mom in the hospital. He was talking to her in his office and noted she did not look healthy. She is allergic to tobacco smoke and was suffering from days in the waiting room, with the families of Debakey's 60 patients. He had her admitted for treatment.

Debakey was 69 when he did my Dad's surgery. His patients filled a floor of the hospital. My mom recalls he did 21 operations that day. He did about 100 a week. His team prepared and closed each patient. By 1992, he had done 50,000 surgeries. "Man was born to work hard," he said.

He also played hard. I recall someone pointing out a blue Mercedes in the parking lot. It had a baby seat in the back. "That's Dr. Debakey's car." His wife was 34.

My Dad, shown here at a much younger age, also believed man was born to work hard. He survived another eight years, one of many thousands who benefit from Debakey's work. Debakey's patients included at least three U.S. presidents and dozens of celebrities and world leaders. Celebrities were no different to him: "Once you incise the skin, you find that they are all very similar," he once said.

And one of the great men Dr. Bakey worked on was Harry Rubenzahl. Because my mother didn't hesitate to think that the doctor who took care of presidents would be the perfect choice to take care of her husband.

Behind the Politician

Did you see Hillary's emotional moment? I never saw the actual video, I just read the reports. I wanted to see the real thing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EahseKxvBoc

Reporting about an emotional response can't capture it. If you haven't seen it, please do. A rare look past the public persona into what drives a public figure.

It's easy to be cynical about our political system but I think most politicians are motivated by real caring and a desire to make a better world. It's true for the few I have met (except Darrel Issa who was a bigger ass in person than he is in public.) I think that in order to withstand the hurdles of major politics, one has to have extraordinary motivation, which means either a deep caring, or a needy ego, and I prefer to think there are more of the former than of the latter.

If a Blog Falls in the Forset and No One is Listening....

(From one of my favorite strips, Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis.)

Yes, and McCartney Had a Band Before Wings...

A woman in her 20s at work commented on my tie. "It's a Jerry Garcia," I told her.

Usually that draws a smile but she looked like she was thinking.

"You don't know who Jerry Garcia is, do you?" I asked.

She hadn't.

"The Grateful Dead," I said.  "You've heard of them, yes?"

"Yes," she said. "I took History of Rock and Roll in college."

OK, I am a dinosaur now.

What's in Your Refrigerator?

Alton Brown of Good Eats challenged people to share a photo of their refrigerator. Kind of an urban anthropology project, I suppose.

I just opened the door and shot:

(Click for full-size)

Turns out it has some interesting things in it right now.

• In the door, see the squirt bottle? Good Eats homemade cocoa syrup! The Hershey's bottle two shelves down also has the Good Eats cocoa syrup in it.
• Unfortunately you can't see what's next to it -- a jar of Good Eats caramel sauce.
• Bottom of door -- the unlabeled beer bottles are my homebrew.
• Top shelf: The two tall jars have homemade plum jam.
• Next to the plum jam is some Good Eats cashew butter.
• Third shelf: Next to the milk is a cheesecake -- from New York! I was in New York and brought home a genuine New York cheesecake (as opposed to what people here on the West Coast call "New York cheescake" which is decidedly not the same.
• Next to the cheesecake is my Butter Butler. Laugh if you want. Turn the handle and it squeezes the butter through a slot at the end, forming a perfect ribbon which softens or melts quickly.
• Below the cheescake is a plain white package -- which contains a pastrami and corned beef sandwich from New York's Carnegie Deli which is THE best deli on planet Earth. Really. I had half the sandwich on the flight home.
• Three cartons of eggs? I bought a dozen, not knowing I had a dozen and a half at home.

Geek Peek from the Past, continued

I had a few friends who replied regarding this article. Thought I would add their two cents here.

> Linda: This is great...ah, the simpler times. I particularly like the ad just below
> yours: Help to care for Fancy Show Poultry. Must like chickens.
>
> I also love the 3 bedroom ranch house (with paneled walls!!!!) for $125/mo.

I loved the "must like chickens" line. There were a lot of chicken farms in the area -- and my Dad had one of them. My brothers and I got to collect eggs after school each day and tend to other chicken-generated organic products.

By the way, that phrase, "running around like a chicken with its head cut off" is true. Not so much running, really, but moving around in all directions -- ok, guess that is more than you city slickers wanted to know.

Two friends asked about the church notices. "I guess all the listings about Temple activities are on another page, huh?" said one. Especially noteworthy since they know I'm Jewish. Well, in Neversink and Grahamsville, there were maybe three Jewish families. No black families and very few of any other non-European ethnicity.

This took one friend by surprise, given that this is the Catskills, which he thought had a zillion Jews. Which is true -- but only in the summer, when a third of the population of New York City came up to either vacation in the Catskills or to work in the resorts. There were regular Jewish residents but most were in the towns -- Liberty, Monticello, Middletown. Towns without sidewalks and street lights were pretty WASPy.

Geek Peek from the Past

This is interesting on several levels. To me, at least.

In 1968, I was almost 16 and already a major nerd.

I think it was my mother's idea that I place a classified ad in the local newspaper. Now, you need to understand what "local" and "newspaper" mean in this case. "Local" was a small, rural community in Sullivan County in upstate New York. We had under 1000 kids in the local school -- and that's K-12. The "newspaper" was weekly, 8 pages, and mimeographed (if you even remember what that was -- it was before photocopiers, let alone inkjet).

The ad asked people to donate their dead electronics (think vacuum tubes, folks) gear (meaning TVs and radios, pretty much).

The interesting thing is that in this tiny farm community, people responded and I soon had 25 or 30 television sets. A couple of them still worked. I got one or two more to work and the rest became parts.

What I find interesting is this. First, the blast from the past and this little glimpse into small town, 1968. Second, the memory of how people responded to an opportunity to help some geeky kid. And third is a sales and marketing lesson, that it works to ask for what you want in an unusual way that captures people's interest. 

The fourth point was how this clipping came to me: The miracle of the Internet. On this, the downside of the Internet "bubble," maybe a lot of us forget that the Internet was and is a transformation in how people reach people. In this case, a guy named Keith Carlsen, a classmate of my baby brother's, began finding and contacting people from the area. He found me via the Internet and has been sending me scanned material from class yearbooks and such. He e-mailed me this clipping.

Sometimes, when we siliconheads get caught up in the technology, it is good to remember that in its shining moments, technology is about people.

This is the full back page of the August 14, 1968 Townsman.