(Presented at open mike night, Trail’s End Cafe, Concord MA, April 1, 2019.)

The last time I was here, two months ago, I performed my first standup comedy routine. Tonight I’d like to tell you a story from my childhood.

I was born in 1953, eight years after the end of World War II, so the image of Orientals as the evil enemy was fresh in the minds of most Americans. At that time the stamp “made in Japan” meant that the item, usually a toy, was cheaply made and would fall apart after a few uses. When I was growing up in Cambridge, I remember walking down Linnaean St. on the way home from school and seeing a car full of teenaged kids drive by with one kid hanging out the window making the sign of “Chink-eyes” with his face and hands, and yelling “Ching Ching Chinaman!!” It was always jarring to realize that I stood out, that I did not look like every other kid.

My refuge at that time was my family, and specifically my brothers Howie, who was a year older than me, and Harold, a year younger. We would team up with Kenny, who lived in the brick building down on the corner of Humboldt and Linnaean (his dad was the super), find an old tennis ball or wiffle ball, and play two-on-two stickball using an old broomstick for a bat. Since I was the middle child (“the ham in the sandwich”, so to speak), Kenny and I would team up against Howie and Harold.

One thing you should know about me is that throughout my life, and especially back then, I have hated to lose. So whenever Kenny and I lost, which was at least half the time, I would start bawling like a baby, at the top of my lungs, screaming, crying, yelling “It’s not fair!” even though I had no basis for saying this at all. Howie and Harold and Kenny just stood and watched me rolling around on the ground, and waited patiently for my tantrum to end.

One day as this scenario was unfolding yet again, my screaming was interrupted by the sound of a window being flung open from the apartment building behind us. A woman’s voice emanated from the window: “Would you SHUT UP, you COMMUNISTS!!!” I immediately stopped crying and we all ran into the house terrified. My mom was in the kitchen cooking. “Mom, what’s a Communist?”

“Shhhh!!! Shhhh!!! Where did you hear that word?”

“The lady next door just called us Communists!!”

“Oh don’t worry about that, she was probably just upset because of your crying, Eddie.”

**************

Flash forward twenty-five years. I am driving home from work on I-290 heading east.  I am bone-tired and I am driving with my unconscious mind, letting the music from the radio wash over my brain.

Suddenly I am aware of a busful of kids passing me on the left. Out the back window is hanging a teenaged boy flashing me Chink-eyes. I snap awake and start to follow the bus. What can I do? I can’t pull in front of it and force it to the side of the road like Magnum P.I….

Finally I reached my turnoff onto I-495 and let the bus continue on its way. What could I do? Here I was, a 35 year-old anesthesiologist and I was being victimized by a teenaged racist twenty years younger than me.

When I got home I was depressed. And then it hit me. I knew the name of the school the kid went to, it was on the bus. I would call the principal of the school and file my complaint, adult to adult.

And so I did just that. The principal sounded intelligent, bright, and not at all like a racist. I explained that the student had made a gesture at me that was an anti-Asian slur, and he completely understood. “I know who those kids are, they’re coming from hockey practice”, he said. “They’ll be getting in within the half-hour. Don’t worry, I’ll give them a piece of my mind!!”

That night I slept like a baby.

**********************

Back to my childhood.

The next afternoon there was a woman waiting on the front steps of Peabody School when we were leaving for home. She came up to me and took my hand into both of hers. “I’m sorry that I called you Communists. I just couldn’t stand that crying anymore!”

Thanks for listening.

(Presented at open mike night, Trail’s End Cafe, Concord MA, February 11, 2019)

First of all, I just want you to know that this is a COMEDY sketch. In fact, it’s my first one ever. I just retired from being a doctor, so I’m trying to find something new to do with my life. Since I’m also Korean, I thought I’d try the comedy thing, kind of like Ken Jeong but without the nudity. (Don’t worry I’m not going to start taking my clothes off…)

The reason I just retired is that five months ago I had a HEART ATTACK. And not one of those little heart attacks that makes you feel a little bit of indigestion, but you go into the emergency room anyway and there they do an EKG and get blood tests and come back to you and say “Why don’t you come stay with us overnight? We have a nice bed for you in the CCU.” No, not one of those heart attacks.

This one was a BIG HONKIN’ heart attack, complete with a slam dunk to the cath lab, arrest on the table, seven gigundo electric shocks, ECMO, which sounds like a science fiction robot but is really a heart lung bypass machine, and two months in the hospital on a Disney ride through hell. Although actually, it wasn’t hell for me–I was asleep. It was hell for my wife Carol. Luckily, Carol is a very strong person.

Anyway, this little sketch is not about my heart attack (although I just spent several minutes telling you about it), but about the AFTERMATH, the bottom line being this: Being a cardiac patient is NO FUN!

I am NOW OLD. However, I was not always old. I used to be young. In fact, I used to be as young as many of you in this room! I look at young people walking down the street, and I think, “I used to be able to walk like that!” And I’ve had both my hips replaced! As I grow older, you might expect that I would feel older, but no, I have continued to feel pretty much like a kid. I just the other day figured out that this is why I keep listening to the sixties channel on Sirius satellite radio. All of the songs they play were on the radio when I was about fifteen! So listening to these songs makes me feel young. (Although actually I did see a fifteen year-old kid in the mall yesterday and realized, no, I don’t really wanna be fifteen again.)

Be that as it may, being reminded that I am old is always an INSULT to me. For one thing, I have been shedding hair like crazy. Also, I’m on a new blood thinner called ticagrelor (great name!) and so I find unexplained BRUISES on myself every day. Every time one is gone two new ones pop up.

Also, to make matters worse, I am a “PICKER”. I am constantly picking at my lip, my skin, and any little scabs that may have grown up from my prior episodes of picking. This leads, of course, to bleeding, and now, instead of stopping in a few minutes, it just doesn’t stop. I have to put a little piece of wadded-up tissue on it and look for a piece of tape. Of course, I am never on the same floor that the Band-aids are on when this happens. Maybe it’s time to spend $2.99 on another box of Band-aids…

A few weeks ago I went to the ORIENTATION for cardiac rehab, and I asked the physical therapist if it was okay for me to shovel snow. She got very excited and said me, “Get someone else to shovel your snow! We want you to avoid going out in twenty- or thirty-degree weather.” I looked out the window and said, “Wait, where are we living?” Very seriously she told me not to breathe in cold air, to wear one of those mufflers or scarves so that I would be breathing in my own warmed gases.

Following her instructions, I find a mixture of good and bad things. Using the scarf is protective, but it prevents me from feeling one of the joys of life, that FIRST BREATH of cold, bracing winter air when you go outside that makes you feel alive! The other thing is that, when you’re all bundled up like that, you have no idea how cold it actually is, so you don’t know what you’re missing! The third thing is that being afraid of going outside and breathing is depressing.

The dietitian’s instructions were equally helpful. She led off with “Of course, we don’t want to deprive you of anything which is a joy in your life!” Which she followed up right away with “But fruit juice is a definite no-no!” I looked at her.

“Freshly squeezed ORANGE JUICE is one of the joys of my life.” She smiled at me. “You know of course that the sugar in orange juice causes a spike in your triglycerides and also a spike in insulin and then…” her voice trailed off when she saw the look on my face. “Freshly squeezed orange juice is one of the joys of my life. If I am deprived of freshly squeezed orange juice my will to live will be severely compromised.” Again she saw the look on my face, which showed that I wasn’t kidding. “Maybe you can consider using a smaller glass…”

“Let’s go on. Do you eat red meat?” I looked at her again. “RIB EYE STEAKS are one of the joys of my life…” This time she avoided me completely and turned to Carol. “As you probably know the whole area of saturated fats is in a mess now anyway. Just try to trim off the fat and limit red meat to once a week.” I breathed a sigh of relief. I have two beautiful thick rib eye steaks in the freezer which I haven’t touched, but I just felt like I needed to draw the line somewhere.

Yes, I now use a SMALLER GLASS, but I do find myself refilling it several times. Each time I put in less and less, until finally I am just dribbling a mouthful or two into the glass. But somehow the container still seems to empty out pretty fast anyway.

No, it’s not fun being a cardiac patient. But, I am thrilled to be alive! Life is a mixture of tragedy and comedy, sometimes in the same (covered) breath.

Thanks for listening!

1.28.2019.1 Today Carol and I came to the Farber for her acupuncture session, and when I saw the sign for the Zakim Center I realized that I was close to the food court, where I could score some chicken teriyaki! We discussed our eating strategy, and I decided to go for it. As soon as Carol was taken in I went across the path to the Sakura Japan.

The last time I was there, two weeks ago when Carol was getting her treatment, I learned from a security guard that you could order extra meat for $1.49, so I ordered a chicken and shrimp for $8.99 with extra chicken and extra shrimp. What I didn’t realize when I did this was that “extra meat” means “double meat”, and so I was served a styrofoam plate holding an enormous amount of food! Given that our plan was to go out to Mary Chung afterward, I realized that I might be screwed.

I started off on the shrimps, which were scattered liberally through the dish, and meanwhile reflected on the fact that three months ago I was recovering from my massive heart attack and had almost no appetite. Everything tasted insipid to me, like cardboard, and the only food I desired was Mary Chung’s egg drop soup, which my niece Lizzy and her boyfriend Alex brought me on one occasion, and Carol on several others. Bringing the soup involved ordering over the phone, driving to Central Square in Cambridge, finding a hard-won parking spot, rushing in to pick up the precious cargo, then returning to the hospital, finding another parking space, and bringing the hot soup up to the Cardiomyopathy Unit on Pratt 8. So it was not a small favor to ask.

However, my life literally hung in the balance. Despite having had a feeding tube (which I insisted on whipping out at a moment’s notice), I had lost thirty-seven pounds since the incident, and I was taking in pathetically few calories by mouth. Typically I would request a certain food, but when it was delivered, often with great effort, I would have one taste and then push it away. Too cold. Too hot. Not enough salt. There was always some excuse not to eat a reasonable portion. And Carol stood helplessly by, not judging or scolding, but trying gently to coax me to eat, like a little baby. I’m convinced that Carol’s experience being a wonderful mother to two boys helped her navigate this period. We have often joked that I was her third child, but in this case it was even more true.

By this time I had finished the generous portion of shrimp, interspersed with some of the chunkier pieces of dark meat chicken for variety, and started in on the rest of the chicken in earnest. The plate was looking a little less imposing now. Maybe I could get through it.

After leaving Tufts I was transferred by ambulance to a rehab hospital in Woburn where the food was slightly more appealing, but my appetite continued to wane. My cousin Hannah came to visit and brought an enormous serving of bulkogi, Korean marinated barbecued beef. I ate three or four of the smallest most tender pieces, but unfortunately most of the delicious marinade dripped onto the floor and hardened into a fragrant mess that kept the housekeeping crew busy for the rest of my two-week stay.

I got home a few days before Thanksgiving, and I remember being overwhelmed by the amounts of food that were being prepared and put on the table: huge servings of mashed potatoes and gravy, two large trays of stuffing, and of course a twelve-pound turkey which looked perfectly cooked, but of course was a little raw on the bottom where most of the dark meat was. I sat at the table and picked at my food, and watched my family eat heartily.

During this time one of the few foods that sustained my appetite was what is called “kim” in Korea, roasted salted seaweed. My cousin Hannah dropped me off a large bag of it on Thanksgiving morning. It came packaged in non-threatening pre-sealed plastic baglets, and was delicious to my altered palate.

This whole struggle culminated in a magical episode: the bag of perfect potato chips. One day we went to Star and I asked Carol to buy some Utz potato chips and Heluvagood buttermilk ranch dip. Then we went to the oral surgeon’s office for Carol’s postop check. As she was going in I asked her to get me the chips and dip from the trunk of the car.

As I started to eat, I noticed that every chip out of the bag had a perfect ovoid shape. Having always eschewed ridged potato chips, I was also resigned to the reality that a large proportion of the chips from a normal bag will be broken, cracked, or chipped. This was the magic bag. Even when I fished out a handful of chips, they were all perfect!

(Parenthetically, my friend Sharlene’s husband used to drive an Utz delivery truck, and even entertained the idea at one point of buying his own route. He decided not to.)

When Carol emerged from the doctor’s office I told her about the magic bag of chips and began to feed her, chip by chip, as we drove home. At first she requested no dip, but as the ride went on she transitioned to all chips with dip. I took turns feeding her and me.

Since that day the magic bag of Utz potato chips has become a legend in our house, i.e. between Carol and me. It was the straw that broke the back of my anorexia and helped restore, or perhaps express, my will to live. I have now gained back about fifteen of the pounds that I lost and am fighting to keep my BMI under 30 (186 pounds for me). As Carol says, it was a sneaky way to lose weight…

By the way, I did catch a second wind and finish that plate of chicken teriyaki. And when I left the food court I swung back around and scored a free sample too! Complete with a toothpick…

Thanks for reading!

1.28.2019 4.22 2024
…when I was in the Cardiomyopathy Unit recovering from my cardiac arrest⁰. It came as a complete surprise to me. I was lying in my room, still in the resolving fog of my two-month period of heavy sedation and marginal brain perfusion, when a dignified gray-haired doctor came up to my bedside. “Dr. Ed Koh? Ed? I’m Jim. We were interns together.”
You could have knocked me over with a feather. My mind flew back to July 1981,] when Jim and I were two of ten newly-hatched doctors starting their medical internship training. At the time Jim was a handsome young man who radiated health. He had a head of curly light-brown hair, and a mustache,
The man who stood in front of me now no longer had that raw animal energy, but when I saw his well-groomed short-cut hair and the alert, intelligent look in his crystal blue eyes I recognized that he was the same man that I had known thirty-seven years ago.
Ours was supposed to be a “gentleman’s internship”, with one-in-four call and night floats. However, what they didn’t tell you is that, being a community hospital, there were no fellows to carry the burden of night call. At five o’clock or so all of the attendings went home, so after that if a sick patient came in, you were on your own, meaning the intern and their JAR (junior assistant resident), who was theirself only a year or so out of medical school. If two sick patients came in, your JAR got the sicker one, and you got the other one.
As a result of this setup, the year turned out to be quite an intense one. If your patient needed a temporary pacemaker, you put it in under the guidance of your JAR. If your JAR was tied up you called your attending in from home and did it under their guidance. If your patient needed a Swan-Ganz pulmonary artery cathether, same deal. Over the course of the year I counted seventeen occasions where I put in either a pacer or a Swan, seventeen more than I would have had I been working at one of the academic centers in Boston.
Naturally over the course of the year I became a kind of mini-cardiologist. I had always been interested in reading EKGs (electrocardiograms), and I was very stimulated by my rotations in the CCU (coronary care unit) and ICU (intensive care unit). When patients died I pored over their rhythm strips to try to figure out what had happened to them. I was sometimes even right. Without fully realizing it, I must have developed a reputation among my fellow interns as someone who cared intensely about my work as a young doctor.
Over the years I had lost track of Jim’s whereabouts. “I thought you went to the NIH!(National Institutes of Health)”
“I went there for a few years to do a research fellowship, but then I came back to Boston to do a fellowship in cardiology.”
“Where are you working now?”
“I’m the chief of cardiology here!” My jaw dropped. “In fact, every cardiologist who has taken care of you during your stay here works for me!”
Tears came to my eyes. I owed this man my life. He and his teams of crack physicians had rescued me, literally from the jaws of death, using inventions of modern cardiology which were simply not available decades ago: LVAD (left ventricular assist device), ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), and cardiac catheterization with stenting. They had shocked me seven times, performed CPR for thirty-two minutes, and done a series of complex procedures over the course of an intensive seven hours which made it possible for me to be alive today.
What could I say? “Thank you, Jim. Thank you so much.” He took my hand into his and we stayed like that for a minute.
“I came by the CCU last week and saw your two sons in your room playing guitar and singing. If I should ever be in the same position I would like my kids to do the exact same thing for me.” Tears welled up again. David and Jonny had sung and played to me for hours, so I heard (I have no conscious memory of it), and every doctor and nurse who took care of me during that time commented on it in an affectionate and appreciative way. “Tell them they can come back anytime!” was a typical refrain from the staff. In this time of crisis my family had come through for me big-time.
My internship had been a very difficult year for me. I had started off being on top of the world, graduating with an MD-PhD from the Harvard-MIT Program, defending a ground-breaking thesis with Dr. Walle Nauta as my mentor, and winning a residency slot (for the following year) at Harvard’s Beth Israel Hospital. My personal life was on an upward trend too; I had begun to date my beautiful, wonderful wife-to-be Carol. I was at the top of my game.
That summer my dad had his first stroke. Although he had no measurable functional deficit from this, he underwent a profound personality change which left him “lobotomized”. He went from being the most dynamic, pain-in-the-ass person one could imagine to being as passive as a vegetable. Given how fundamental my relationship had always been with my dad, this was extremely upsetting for me.
My year as an intern started with upsetting events too. Two weeks into my internship I was assigned a cardiac patient who did not wish to be given an IV (intravenous), admitted to an ICU, or resuscitated. (See my blog post “I become a doctor”.) Shortly after meeting him, he dropped dead in my presence, and I was helpless to do anything but watch his heart slow to a standstill and then pronounce him dead. My colleague Lynn came to be with me during this seemingly interminable vigil (which lasted about twenty minutes in reality–she only had this time because she was post-call and having trouble getting out of the hospital), and we sat against the wall and commiserated upon this new phase of our lives which we had entered.
Between these different stresses I became quite depressed over the course of the year. I remember that one day on rounds my SAR (senior assistant resident) Bruce essentially had to dictate to me the order list that I was writing on my patient. “Colace 100 mg po bid for constipation…” while at the same time giving me a pep talk to help me get through the rest of the day. By the time I finished the year I was happy to leave for my anesthesia residency.
Unfortunately, my depression that year was not an isolated incident. Years later, I learned that I had bipolar disease, or manic depression, which made me prone to recurrent bouts of either hypomania (hyper mood) or black depressions which interfered with my ability to work. Over the years I lost at least four jobs to circumstances which could be attributed, at least in part, to this illness. And in terms of career advancement, it likely prevented me from reaching the promise of my first twenty-eight years.
And so it was that I said tearfully to Jim, “I hope I wasn’t too much of a fuck-up that year!” Jim made a soft clucking sound. “Oh no, not at all!” He didn’t elaborate, but I could tell from the expression on his face that he was sincere. Somehow, despite my shortcomings, I had won enough respect from my fellow interns that now, thirty-seven years later, I was remembered in a positive way by one of the most accomplished of those colleagues.
When he was leaving, he said “Ed I will try to keep track of when you are being discharged to rehab and try to visit you again then.” I was very touched that he said that.
Last month Carol and I went to visit the CTU (cardio-thoracic unit) and CCU after an appointment with my cardiologist. We took a group picture with one of our favorite intensivists and two of the nurses who had taken care of me. When we got home I posted the picture on Facebook with the caption “So grateful to be alive!” Over the next few weeks I got over a hundred and fifty likes, loves, and comments from friends and colleagues from all walks of my life. I felt like Richard Dreyfuss in “Mr. Holland’s Opus”, being celebrated by his students and colleagues at the end of his career, except that instead of being greeted in a large auditorium I was being greeted by my real friends over the Internet.
Almost losing my life has given me some new perspectives on that life. I started fast, fueled by the dynamics of my Korean-American family, and probably by a dormant illness as well. As I ran into more and more difficult challenges, my ability to deal with them became more and more hindered by that illness. I did not end up becoming the superstar that people expected in my youth. In the end, however, I was able to finish out a long and productive medical career, winning the respect, affection, and gratitude of hundreds of colleagues, students, and co-workers along the way. And, together with Carol, we were able to raise a healthy and happy family.
I left a message for Jim before my discharge to the rehab hospital, but we were unable to connect with each other again. However, I hope to do so sometime in the near future. In the meantime, I will always be grateful for the affirmation he gave me that day in my hospital room, the reassurance that my colleagues saw my real self through the obstacles that life had placed in my way.
Thanks for reading.

(N.B. This post follows “I fall in love with Godspell.”)

When we agreed to perform at Norfolk State Prison, we were still bathing in the euphoria of having put on a successful Godspell-based folk mass at OCBC (Old Cambridge Baptist Church), and we had no idea what we were getting into. As it turns out, MCI (Massachusetts Correctional Institute) Norfolk was a medium- and high-security prison housing over a thousand male felons convicted of crimes like grand theft auto, aggravated assault, and murder.

When we entered the dingy soot-stained fortress-like building, we went through a security gauntlet that included an electronic gate and a manual patdown. My flute case and Kathy and Barbara’s guitar cases were opened and searched. Even my tuning fork was questioned. It dawned on me that this was far from the freewheeling, open atmosphere of either Harvard in 1970 or Broadway. This was what people meant when they referred to “the real world.”

When we got inside, the large black-walled room seemed strangely claustrophobic, as if there were no air circulation. The room was packed with hepped-up men who were rhythmically clapping and stomping their feet. There was a lot of yelling and calling out across the room. There were uncomfortable-looking men (and one small woman!) scattered throughout the crowd whom I took to be guards. I imagined that if this crowd ever got out of hand it would take many more than these few to get it under control.

I found myself fretting about our set list. As it turned out, it really didn’t matter at all. As soon as Kathy and Barbara got on stage with their blonde hair and young flexible bodies, the crowd went wild. It struck me that my presence there was totally optional. K & B were in performance mode and seemingly unaware of the effect they were having on the crowd. They shook their hair and their bodies and the men responded like the teenaged girls on the Beatles’ Ed Sullivan show debut, or the audience for Ann-Margret on “Viva Las Vegas”!

I honestly remember very little about the particulars of our performance. We didn’t try to do a folk mass, but instead just sang songs from the show, maybe five or so including “Day by day” of course. I sang backup and played my tambourine and flute, but my contribution was extraneous. All eyes were focused on Kathy and Barbara and their energetic dancing

When we were done the girls were happily in the post-show afterglow. “Well that was fun!” they said breathlessly. Frank, our sponsor, was similarly enthusiastic. “We have to do this again sometime!” He looked in my direction, but having learned my lesson the hard way, I did not let an encouraging word escape my lips. Instead, I inwardly shook my head, glad to have escaped this experience with my life. I had learned an important lesson: the “real world” is a scary place.

What this post and the last one have shown me is that, once I entered the world on my own, away from the protective cocoon of my parents’ home, it was very easy to say “yes” to the world, but much harder to say “no” to those appreciative persons who encouraged me to express my talents and abilities, but were not aware of my human limitations. And why should they be? It was my life, not theirs.

Forty plus years later I am still working to apply this lesson.

Thanks for reading!

At the beginning of my sophomore year I went to the Wilbur Theater in Boston to see Godspell, and I fell in love with the show and the people in it.  By “fell in love” I mean I became a Godspell groupie, going to show after show (I found a way to sneak in for free right after the show had started, through a forward entry), crying at all of the same scenes, and hanging around for hours afterward to schmooze with the cast. I actually became friendly with two of the cast members, Kathy Solway, a willowy blonde with a lovely, precise voice reminiscent of Julie Andrews, and Barbara Laird, a small actress with a big voice. Barbara had the honor of singing “Day by day”, while Kathy was ironically assigned the worst song in the show “Learn your lessons well”.  Barbara and Kathy had only recently become friends by being cast together in the Boston production, and they welcomed me as a third.

At the same time, I was becoming a member of another community, the Old Cambridge Baptist Church in Cambridge, or “OCBC” as the older members called it.  Coincidentally, this group included Harvey Cox, the author of the book (“Feast of fools”) on which Godspell was based. So not by coincidence, the philosophy of the church was much like that of the show, endorsing freedom of expression, music, dance, and the arts, and liberal politics. With my open face and friendly personality, I was welcomed into the church with open arms.

During this time I ate, slept, and breathed Godspell.  I learned the chords to “Day by Day”, which was full of major and minor seventh chords, and played the song again and again on the piano which we had inherited in our Quincy House dorm room. I decided to write a musical show called “The Ash Grove” about a commune that splits up, based on my old high school youth group. I volunteered to lead a worship service at OCBC about Godspell. (OCBC was big on lay leadership of services.)

Meanwhile, Kathy, Barbara and I became a jolly threesome. They decided after the original two-week run of the show had been extended three times, to take the plunge and move out of the seedy Hotel Avery into an apartment on Beacon Street. Barbara’s boyfriend, also an actor, came up from New York on weekends to visit, and we all went to cast parties together.

The male members of the cast were suspicious of me. Several of them were, I think, gay, and suspected that I might also be gay (I am not) and trying to make inroads to them.  In any case, they kept their distance.  One of them, the funniest one on stage, was very intense and serious offstage. Forgetting that they were actors, I found it hard to reconcile their onstage and backstage personas.  This was made all the harder for me by the fact that Kathy and Barbara were, by and large, the same onstage as off: happy, friendly, and gregarious.

It just killed Kathy that she couldn’t sing “Day by day” in the show. She had arguably the best voice in the cast, but her “power zone” was just a little bit higher than that song, which in the Broadway recording was sung by an alto. She walked around humming the song all the time, and she played it on her guitar backstage too. Barbara, meanwhile, did not particularly value her assignment. It was part of her role, and she performed it as she did the rest of her part. If she was aware of Kathy’s envy of her, she didn’t let on.

Over time, Kathy and Barbara became very taken with me–they became convinced that, with my openness and my “cuteness”,  I would fit in very nicely as a member of the Godspell cast. This, of course, fed right into my own fantasy, which was further fueled by my meeting at a cast party a stand-in for Jesus who was a Yale undergraduate who had just driven up from New Haven to play his role that night. What I didn’t consider was the years that that kid had likely spent on off-Broadway and Broadway making him fit for that understudy role (and the fact that that experience on his resume had helped to win him the slot at Yale).

At one of the cast parties I showed off some of my talents: I played “All good gifts” on the piano along with a set of alternate lyrics spoofing the miserable New England winter we were having. (“All this shit around us was sent from heaven above…”) This only reinforced K and B’s theory that I could become a Godspell cast member, and my fantasy that I could write a Broadway musical.

Finally the day came for my OCBC Godspell service. Kathy and Barbara agreed to sing and play a few songs including “Day by day” to add to the veracity of the experience.  The energy level was high in the sanctuary, and when the time came for the sermon I delivered my thoughts. In summary, I said, why should Christians criticize actors (who may not be Christian) for not acting like Christians when they should be asking themselves why they are not better Christians? The question, which seems a bit muddled to me now, was received with hilarity and appreciation by the congregation, and my service was a success.

However, my celebrity at OCBC began to get the better of me. Without asking me, the pastor of the church signed me up to serve on the statewide Baptist church steering committee, which met in Western Massachusetts every month. There were three problems with this: 1) I didn’t have a car. 2) I was not a Baptist. (I am a Methodist–he said that didn’t matter.) 3) I was overcommitted and had no interest in serving in such a capacity. I didn’t have the heart to tell the pastor that I was refusing his assignment, so every month when I received the notices of the meetings I put them on a pile with a growing sense of guilt.

Also, after our service, one of the enthusiastic church members approached me to ask whether we would perform a folk mass at the Norfolk State Prison, where he volunteered. Again having no reason to say “no”, we agreed. This will be the subject of my next blog entry.

It’s been over three years since I last wrote, and a lot has happened since then: a major depression, bilateral hip replacements, several jobs, my wife Carol’s ovarian cancer, and a near-deadly heart attack with cardiac arrest three months ago resulting in a roller coaster two-month hospitalization.  I am now in recovery, reviewing the events that I missed (due to unconsciousness), feeling gratitude for the devotion of my family and friends, and trying to become a useful citizen again, for Carol and for myself.

This piece of writing is not mainly for publication, but just to clear my head, like a type of mental and emotional calisthenic.  I have been slam-dunked into retirement by these recent events, and the only thing that I have identified as something I would like to do with my time and energy is to write, starting with this blog. I feel happy with and proud of many of the entries that I wrote three years ago, which I have been rereading, and I would be glad to pick up the thread and continue in a similar vein, at least for starters.

So what to write about now? We shall see…

A short vignette:

Last weekend I went to my 45th high school reunion from the Hopkins School in New Haven.  The first event was a reception for my class at Rudy’s bar/restaurant on Chapel Street.  I went there with Carol and my mom, showing up 15 minutes before showtime.

When I walked into the room there was one person there: David Kimberly, looking at his cellphone.  I walked up to him, and upon seeing me he grabbed me and gave me a bear hug.  We were both laughing at this point, and he reminded me that five  years ago we had just missed each other at this same event.

“Wait a minute!” I said. “‘This is my father’s world’ in three, two, one…”

And we both started singing the words to a hymn which meant so much to both of us.

This is my father’s world, and to my listening ears,

All nature sings and ’round me rings the music of the spheres.

This is my father’s world, I rest me in the thought

Of rocks and trees of skies and seas,

His hand these wonders wrought.”

Dave sang the melody and I sang a simple (mostly parallel thirds) harmony, for which he complimented me between lines.

Of course, there is more to the story to this.  When I arrived at Edgewood School in the fourth grade, David was the smartest kid in the class.  Within a few months I established myself as the smartest kid in the class, pushing David down to second banana.  He accepted this change graciously, but I always felt that there was a bit of distance between us.

In sixth grade we had a teacher (who I will not name) who had little or no musical ability, but was by her position in charge of the class play, which that year was to be “Carousel”. She held auditions with her and the fourth-grade teacher as judges.

Her auditions required singing the lead soprano part in a song from the play.  Of course, this part was too high for many of the kids.  Some dropped down an octave, which was frowned upon.  However, two of us, Jonny Blitman and I, could ALMOST sing the song, and with great strain, huffing, and puffing, did so.  The teacher rolled her eyes up in the air, and the class got a good laugh at Jonny’s and my expense.

When it came time to award the roles, they were given one-by-one in public, much like choosing up sides in a stickball game, or the NFL draft.  I settled for lesser and lesser parts in my mind (the Starkeeper went to Alan Spatz) until finally there were no parts left.  I had been given no part.  I was heartbroken.

(Dave reminded me that he had initially been given the lead role of Billy Bigelow, but was replaced by Ken Berman when his voice began to change.)

Not only did I get no part, I gained the reputation of someone who could not sing.  This was counter to the fact that my brother Howie and I sang constantly at home, old Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel mainly, improvising harmonies on the fly.  These private experiences did nothing to dispel the notion set forward by the teacher.

One day the class was sent on some kind of program, and Dave and I were asked to put away all the chairs.  In a cheery mood, we began to sing.  For some reason, Dave started to sing the Protestant hymn “This is my father’s world.”  As I did with Howie, I joined in with an improvised harmony, and it sounded quite good.  At the end, Dave said “Wow, Eddie, you have a good voice!”

A weight of self-doubt and shame was lifted from my shoulders by that simple compliment.  No, I was not a bad singer, I was a good singer!  I knew that, but it was so hard in the ecosystem of the sixth grade classroom to go against the teacher’s biases.

I thanked and I thank David Kimberly, my friend and classmate who told me I was a good singer, and helped an eleven year-old boy feel better about himself.

4/21/15

This story is not my own, but I find it so evocative that it feels like mine.  It was told to me and a few other students by Dr. Richardson, a cardiology attending who was filling in for our regular one.  These approximate his words.

When I was a cardiology fellow working the night shift in the ER, we were always excited when we got a referral from Martha’s Vineyard.  There was a really sharp GP (general practitioner) there named Loxie and when he missed something it was because it was a real tough nut to crack.

Anyway, one night around ten I got a call from Loxie telling me that he was sending me a patient with acute episodes of shortness of breath.  He could not hear any heart sounds, and interestingly the man did not have an increased jugular venous pressure (a particular interest of Richardson–he always pronounced the initial “u” with a long sound like  “you” or “jujubee”.  Everyone else always said “jug” like “little brown jug”.  Anyway, the word means yoke.)  He had an enlarged heart.

The patient, Mr. Smith, was flown in to Boston by helicopter and arrived before midnight.  Immediately a team of cardiologists, fellows, and residents pounced on him and began to gather data.   He was a muscular, well-developed man in his seventies, with a big mane of hair and a winning personality.  He indeed had no audible heart sounds of any kind, and his neck veins were sure enough flat, unusual for someone going in and out of congestive heart failure.  His EKG showed an enlarged heart, as did an M-mode echocardiogram.

While they were working on Mr. Smith, he died.  He began to breathe rapidly with great difficulty, then he keeled over.  His monitor showed VTach (ventricular tachycardia), but shocking him did not help.  His heart just kept going back into it.  After over an hour of resuscitation, Richardson “called it”.  With a feeling of failure, he called Loxie back. (For some reason I’m flipping from first to third person.  I’m going to stick with it.)

“We lost your guy.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sure you did your best.”

“I have a favor to ask you.  Can you get permission for a post? (autopsy)  I really want to know what happened to this guy.”

“I can sure try.  I have to drive out to the other end of the island so it will take a little while, but I’ll get it for you.”

Richardson was overcome by a wave of tiredness mixed with depression, and went to the call room to try and catch some sleep.  It was two o’clock.

About an hour and a half later his phone rang.  It was Loxie.  “You have your post,” he said.

At four in the morning the pathologists had the answer: critical aortic stenosis with a pinhole valve opening.  The hole was closing off so much that not even the characteristic murmur of aortic stenosis could be heard, much less the slapping together of valve leaflets.  The neck veins were flat because the issue was not high blood volume but low blood flow.  The heart was enlarged from years of straining against the tiny opening.

At four thirty I called Loxie back.  “It was critical aortic stenosis.”

He could almost see Loxie shaking his head over the phone. “Missed it, and it was right there.”  Long pause.  “Well thanks for your help, doc.  Hey, ya wanna hear something great?”

“Yeah!”

“While I was on the other side of the island I delivered a baby girl!  Eight pounds, four ounces!”

“That IS great,” I said.

As I hung up the phone I realized, Loxie really had something there, working on an island taking care of friends in a close-knit neighborhood.  And me being a cardiology fellow at a prestigious Boston hospital, but now I’m depressed and he just delivered a baby.  Go figure.

This story has stayed with me over decades, and changed my way of thinking about what I do.

Thanks for reading.

4/20/14 & 10/16/2022

For some reason today this story came to mind, and I told it at lunch to my son and his wife.  I think it was prompted by the thought that I had always wanted my two sons to know more about my work and the challenges that I faced. First, a few doctor  jokes (which were not part of the telling today): 1) A medical student one week from graduation is accosted by a nurse in the hallway. “A man down the hall just grabbed his chest and collapsed, and now he is having a seizure.  What should I do?”  His answer: “Well call a doctor for God’s sake!” 2) Question: What do you call the person who graduates last in his med school class?  Answer:  “Doctor”

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Two weeks after my graduation from medical school I was doing my internship, a baby doctor some might call it.  Usually my responsibilities were not too hard to handle, for example pushing the rolling chart rack up the hall during morning “chart rounds”, but as the junior member of a two-person team I sometimes had to step up to the plate when my senior partner was called away.  He was called a JAR (junior assistant resident), but he was a year and two weeks out of medical school and he “ran the ward team”.

On the day in question we couldn’t get through rounds because our JAR, Bob Trautman, kept getting called down to the ER (emergency room) with “stat” pages to deal with a patient who kept going into VTach (ventricular tachycardia), a deadly heart rhythm.  I ended up going through a cursory type of chart rounds with the two medical students, who had the honor of pushing the chart rack since I had been temporarily promoted.

When Bob returned, he said “he’s getting admitted to you.” “To me?  Shouldn’t he be going to the ICU (intensive care unit)?” “He doesn’t want to go to the ICU.  He also doesn’t wanted to be coded (resuscitated) if he should arrest.  He doesn’t even want an IV (intravenous).  He just wants to go to a regular floor bed and let Nature take its course.  Hey, cheer up!  There’s nothing for you to do.  You’ll like him.  He’s from Maine.”

I consulted my handbook. IV Lidocaine? He doesn’t have an IV.  Is there an IM (intramuscular) treatment for VTach?  What a ridiculous question.  But there is, a gram of Pronestyl (procainamide) IM, there it is.  I guess if you’re having trouble getting an IV in? When I went in to meet Walter I did indeed like him.  He was tall and muscular, and dressed like a farmer in a red plaid shirt.  He told me that he started feeling funny today when he was chopping firewood. (!)

He had a strong handshake.  I confirmed with him his treatment (or non-treatment) preferences.  Then I decided to take a positive approach and said to him, “I am going to go over you with a fine-toothed comb!” He got a big, winning smile on his face and said “Let’s do it!”

First I listened to his heart.  I could not hear his heart sounds, but I did hear an enormous diamond-shaped murmur like nothing I had ever heard before.  I looked up at the heart monitor and saw large regular complexes, then a sawtoothed pattern, VTach, then a wiggly chaotic line, VFib (ventricular fibrillation).  Walter slumped back on the bed, unconscious.  He was dying. The monitor was alarming, and I heard the sounds of many people rushing down the hall toward me.  Then I heard Bob’s voice say to them “He’s a DNR. no code. DNR (do not resuscitate).”  The footsteps slowed down, then dissipated.

“What do I do now?”  I asked one of the senior nurses.  “Well, Doctor, you have to wait until all electrical activity is gone, then note the time as the time of death on the death record. Sometimes it takes a while.”  I slumped down into an orange lounge chair against the wall and looked at the monitor.  The VFib pattern had become finer and finer and finally reverted to “flatline” or asystole.  However, every ten seconds or so there was a wide-looking beat.  I needed to wait.

My friend and fellow intern Jen came in to keep me company and sat on the green lounge chair next to me.  She was supposed to be off today “post call”  but she was having trouble getting herself to leave the hospital because a thirty-five year-old patient of hers had died on her watch, of malignant hypertension, and she was too shocked and stunned to finish her paperwork and leave.  We talked about our feelings.

“Did you ever imagine it would be like this, Jenny?” “No, I didn’t.  This was supposed to be the ‘gentleman’s internship’  with only one in four call, night floats, etc. etc.” “I didn’t either.  Only two weeks out of medical school and it already feels like an eternity.” We both sighed and continued to watch Walter’s EKG (electrocardiogram) as the wide complexes spaced out wider and wider.

Finally, twenty minutes later I signed my name on the death certificate. “Time of death 14:34”. I left the room as the nurses came in to wrap up the body, and one of them told me that the patient’s son was in the solarium and would I go talk to him?  Sure. I went into the bright room and saw a stout man with a goatee who was taller and older than me.

Walter was in his eighties, and his son looked to be in his late forties.  He shook my hand and said “Doc, I know you did everything you could for him” and reached out with both arms to hug me.  At that, I started to cry in his arms with my face in his plaid shirt.  “I’m sorry there was nothing I could do.  I’m so sorry.” For a moment a part of me stepped back to see a comical scene,  a man whose father had just died, with a stoical look on his face, comforting a crying twenty eight-year-old baby doctor who had just “lost” his first patient.

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That night I called my parents.  They asked me what was wrong.  “My patient died today!”  I said.  “Oh, Edward, that’s too bad. I’m sure you’re very sad.  How old was he?” “Eighty two”  There was a long pause on the line, and then the booming voice of my dad.  “Oh, let him go!!!” Didn’t I know yet that no one lives forever?  No, they hadn’t taught me that one in medical school.

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The next day I was paged out of rounds by the pathologist.  He asked me to come down to the morgue and see something on my patient’s autopsy.  I went down and there was Walter’s heart, with a large round blood clot lodged into his aortic valve.  Pathologist: “This guy was walking around with a pinhole for an aortic valve, and finally this clot got stuck in there and that was all she wrote.  I even tried to force it out with a garden hose, but no luck.  The only thing which would have saved this guy was emergency heart surgery, which…” “he didn’t want”, I said, completing his thought. As I left the morgue I felt a weight lifted from me.  There was nothing I could have done. It was not my fault.

I count this day as the beginning of my life as a doctor.

Thanks for reading.