BODY PARTS, DOCTORS, ATUL GAWANDE

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As a child my doctor was Uncle Jack, part of a couple that were my parents best friends.  Fayette and Jack.  They were bridge players, played bridge incessantly (a few times a week my entire childhood). Fayette talked to my mother every single day.  Jack was from Brooklyn.  His parents were Eastern European and they owned a candy store.  They wanted him to be a doctor (he’d wanted to be a painter) and so he went to medical school.  Fayette grew up in the Schwab House in the 70’s on Riverside Drive.  Her family paid for Jack’s medical school.  She went to NYU not City College, and wrote her graduating thesis on the Importance of Comic Books.  She never worked, had four children, and always reminded me of a guest on the Jack Paar show.  She was very good at conversation. Uncle Jack was my doctor through college.  We never ever talked much about my actual body.  He’d ask  how I felt and I’d say fine and then, we’d discuss something far more interesting, which was pretty much anything.

So many years later I think about doctors, and the way aging changes our relationship to them.

We all have doctors now.  They are sometimes even for separate body parts.

We need cardiologists and hematologists and endocrinologists and prosthodontists..  Some of that has to do with getting older.  Suddenly everything stops working well.

Even I who am not a Go To The Doctor type have a few that I see every year.  Clifton Jackness, the endocrinologist, because I have Hashimoto’s Disease, an autoimmune condition with a far more alarming name than it deserves  I have suggested to Clifton Jackness (who is Jewish by the way but has the name Clifton for reasons he has never been able to determine) that we rename Hashimoto’s to make it sound less threatening and whenever I visit I bring a list of alternative suggestions. He’s a menschy guy, kind of an old fashioned Uncle Jack doctor, although he is young, with a  four year old son.  He talks to his patients as though we are friends, and my blood pressure always tests normal there.

Lawrence Kempf is my GP.  I like him too.  He’s a Big Big talker, and because he has had many celebrity patients in his life, and he likes to gossip  which makes me feel better instantly. (Gypsy Rose Lee!!! Liza Minelli!!! Aretha!!!! He even saw Jackie Onassis once because he’s Greek and knew Onassis) . I like visiting him, and always feel better when I do.

The last few weeks because Peter has a bad hip, we’ve had to find a hip doctor.  Surgical body parts are well separated now.  Friends sent us names and we compiled a long list (many people we know have new knees, new hips, new shoulders) of Doctors Who Take Care of Various Body Parts.  It’s a good list, and I am happy to pass it on to anyone else who needs it.  We chose an Israeli who likes documentary films and does 550 knees and hips a year.  One deterrent, which

we chose to ignore, was his 96 page online resume. He is a hip is a hip is a hip kind of guy, and

communicates an I Can Fix Any Hip On Earth Just Give Me The Chance.  So we will.

When I was looking for a new GP a few years ago, one of the questions that seemed important then was Have You Read Atul Gawande.  (I picked someone who did, and he quit being a doctor after a while.  Lawrence Kemp said, about Atul Gawande, that he’s in a stack beside his bed.  That seemed good enough.

As for Body Parts, I now take them more seriously.  But not all that much.

LOVE TO ALL OF YOU,

ESTHER