The Peacock

Both my husband and I bear the scars of early burns.  Mine is under my chin and dates from a very minor,  almost funny childhood accident;  his scar is on his arm, dates from the hour of his birth, and tells a more somber tale.

As I child I loved summer camp and went on to be a camper waitress,  and then a drama counselor. (See Frenched!,  The Camper-Waitress Goes to the Fair, and Piano Man – Remembering Herb)

One memorable summer when I was a young camper we were sitting around a campfire toasting marshmallows on sticks as a counselor told a ghost story.  Intent on the scary story,  I took my stick out of the fire to eat my toasty marshmallow  but as I raised it to my mouth it hit me under the chin instead.  Now decades later I have the scar of what I affectionately call my “marshmallow burn”.

How my husband was burned is quite a different story.

On the cusp of WWII and the Nazi horror,  my husband’s parents fled Europe.   (See Family Photo and  Tracing Our Roots)

They were able to get visas for Bolivia where they lived for the duration of the war and where my husband was born – prematurely.   The hospital conditions were relatively primitive and there were no incubators for premies.  Instead the 5 pound baby was placed on a shelf under the table where his mother had labored, and where she was then being treated for a serious post-partum complication.   Meanwhile a hot water bottle was placed beside the infant and altho it kept him warm,  it badly burned and scarred his arm.  But thankfully mother and baby survived their ordeals and after the war the family sailed for the States.

Of course my husband doesn’t remember the kindly Bolivian doctor who delivered him and treated his mother,  and has only heard the hot water bottle story that explains his badly burnt arm.  But he does have wonderful memories of his early years in Cochabamba, a city of beautiful fountains, squares, and parks.

And as a three-year old he remembers playing in a Bolivian park where a peacock frightened him by suddenly spreading its beautiful feathers.

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

My Day in the ER

Recently I spend practically a whole day in the ER.

I had a Zoom book club meeting the day before and was eating a tuna fish sandwich as I sat at my computer talking with my book club friends.

I made the tuna salad myself and in fact my husband was eating it downstairs while I was upstairs Zooming,  and he later told me he thought it tasted fine.   But it tasted off to me,  and a few hours later I felt sick to my stomach and that night spent more hours in the bathroom than in bed.

The next morning I still felt awful and called my wonderful primary care physician Dr M.  His nurse told me it sounded like a case of food poisoning and rather than come to the office I should go to the ER as I’d need fluids after throwing up all night

And so I went to the local hospital in the Connecticut community where we spend half our time.   It’s a wonderful hospital,  and there’s usually no wait in the ER and there wasn’t that day.   I was immediately ushered into a private room,  quite unlike the narrow bays separated by curtains that I’ve seen in the crowded ERs in many New York hospitals.

Then a kindly staff treated me with state-of-the-art medical equipment.  But when I mentioned I had a slight pain in my abdomen,  a red flag went up that sent me for an MRI – not the usual  protocol for someone in the ER with food poisoning.

And the results were a bit alarming – it seems the MRI revealed a cyst on my pancreas as well as something suspicious on my breast.  The MRI results were shown to the surgical team who deliberated for awhile while I worried, and although they concluded that nothing was urgent, they strongly advised me to pursue those two incidental findings with my doctors.  And so of course I continued to worry.

After six hours in the ER I was discharged,  and the next day I called my New York gastroenterologist and my New York gynecologist with the Connecticut ER story.   Each asked that my medical records be sent from Connecticut to New York,  and I made appointments for further tests with the results to be sent back to Connecticut so my doctors in both places were kept – pardon the expression – abreast.

And so my inter-state medical saga continued as I worried for a few more weeks while awaiting those test results.  Then finally I got a clean bill of heath from both doctors.  The pain in my abdomen that had sent me for that MRI was now chalked up to gastritis caused by all my vomiting that fateful night.

Back in Connecticut I went to see Dr M.

“Isn’t it lucky that when I went to the ER for food poisoning they did that MRI and uncovered those incidental findings!”  I said.

One of the things I like about Dr M is that he’s not an alarmist.

“Actually my dear,  it might have been better had they not been so conscientious and not done the MRI,”  he said,  “It would’ve saved you all that unnecessary worry.”

You know,  he was right.

– Dana Susan Lehrman

My tried and true approach to all problems with technology: Turn it off and turn it back on. Nine times out of ten, the problem is mysteriously fixed.
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Scammed!

I thought I was pretty smart but the scammers out there are even smarter!

A few years ago I got a call telling me my Verizon bill was overdue and my cell phone service would soon be discontinued.

I thought I’d paid that bill and could easily have checked,  or  I could have hung up and called Verizon directly – but for some stupid reason  I did neither.  Apparently the thought of losing my cell phone service was so daunting I inexplicably did what the practiced voice on the phone told me to do –  I very stupidly Zelled $1400 (!!!) to a number I was given to supposedly cover what was due on my Verizon account PLUS several months of advanced payment to insure that I wouldn’t fall behind again and risk having my service interrupted.

But as soon as I hit the send button the horrible realization washed over me that I’d been horribly  scammed!  I called my bank,  I called Zelle,  and I even called the police all to no avail.

Then I remembered that at the suggestion of our computer tech we’d recently gotten a LifeLock insurance policy.  So I called our Lifelock agent.   who explained that I was covered for identity theft and other dire contingencies.  but not for stupidity.

And so I learned a very valuable although rather costly lesson,  and the next time someone tries to scam me,  or sell me a bridge,  I‘ll tell them to fuhgeddaboudit!

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

I used to love the evening cookouts or sleeping under the stars that we did lakeside throughout my summers as a camper at the National Music Camp (now Interlochen Arts Camp) in Interlochen, MI from 1964-1969. The girl’s side was by Lake Wabakanetta (Duck Lake) and we had a large expanse of sand with a building which housed fireplaces and equipment for fun in the sun. Here we were not competitors, vying for the best chairs in the orchestra, leads in the plays or operettas, or solos in the dance recitals; we were friends in the cabins, just kids enjoying ourselves. We built safe campfires for cookouts, then, as the sun set over the lake, sang songs, roasted marshmallows, ate s’mores. If we were sleeping out, we might tell scary stories, do “finger lifting” (“you are as light as a feather”), sing folk songs, but always end the evening with this favorite (which I just learned while writing this story is known as “Canadian Taps”; we learned slightly different lyrics):

Each campfire lights anew…
The flame of friendship true.
The joy we had in knowing you
Will last a whole life through.

And as the embers die away,
We wish that we might always stay.
But since we cannot have our way,
We’ll meet again, some other day.

This would be followed by a hushed version of Taps (Day is done, gone the sun…) as we snuggled in our sleeping bags and drifted to sleep while gazing at the stars.

The counselors ensured that the campfire was safely extinguished, trash disposed of, and all was right in our corner of the world. Camp was built (in 1928) on the edge of a pine forest, now a state park; the air was pure and delicious. Sacred memories.

 

Martha’s Vineyard is predominantly a resort community, particularly in the summer. We go to the beach, exercise in some form, ride bikes, hike the beautiful trails, socialize with friends. So when it rains, everyone comes into town, looking to shop, go to the movies or find something else to do.

We happen to live right in town, a block from the shopping district, so we just stroll around the busy area. Years ago there was a marvelous bookstore, Bickerton and Ripley, right around the corner from us. They had a great selection of books (this was before Amazon became the behemoth it is today) and a wonderful children’s nook, full of delightful titles for readers of all ages with a little cushioned bench, inviting children to pull out a book and linger. My children visited often.

The store was owned by two women who lived on my street. In fact, Marilyn gave David his first job there the summer he turned 14. He stocked books for them. She interviewed my shy son over Memorial Day Weekend, told him he had to stand straight and make eye contact with her. He learned to work hard for her. It was a summer that one of the Harry Potter books came out and the owners opened late that night, dressed as sorcerers to sell the books to the line of eager children. David had spent the day unboxing those precious books and scarfed one up for his grateful younger sibling.

But years earlier, the owners had offered me a great idea. My kids were always bugging me to buy books, but I was not always with them when they came into the store. Marilyn suggested I set up a house account for them with my credit card. “But how will I limit their purchases?”, I inquired. I knew they had no bounds when it came to Calvin and Hobbs, books about outerspace and the like. “Not to worry”, she responded. “There will be a $20 spending limit per child”. That was satisfactory and I gave her my credit card to set up the account.

The movie “Chicken Run” had come out earlier in the year. My kids loved everything from the Aardman Studios and just adored this movie. One rainy night, I was home alone with them. This was in the year 2000. Dan still worked and was not home. I couldn’t find them anywhere. I searched the entire house. Finally, I noticed the door to Jeffrey’s room was closed. I knocked lightly and went in. They were huddled together on his twin bed, pouring over the “Chicken Run” book, purchased earlier that day. The door was closed to keep the cat in the room. I looked at the price of the book – $38! How did they manage to buy that (it was a beautiful coffee table book on the making of the movie, as seen in the Featured photo). My clever children had pooled their resources – each used their $20 quota – to purchase this wonderful book, which now rests on my coffee table in Newton! It occupied their entire rainy evening.

 

Though not an art history major, I’ve loved looking at and learning about art since I was a small child. I tend to be very sensitive to all forms of external stimuli, which makes me open and vulnerable to various forms of creative arts and I enjoy most.

For example, I have always loved the story of Romeo and Juliet. (I first saw it performed as a 10 year old, while visiting my brother at the National Music Camp – he was a Capulet servant, but the girl who played Juliet went on to a professional career, playing opposite Jack Lemon in his Academy Award winning role in “Save the Tiger”.) I desperately wanted to perform the lead role at some point in my life. The closest I came was doing one of her monologues in Speech Class in college. But my mother took me to see the Stuttgart Ballet perform their version (set to Prokofiev’s dramatic music) when John Cranko, their genius leader, was still alive and I was still in my teens. Marcia Haydée, one of the leading ballerinas of her day, danced the role of Juliet. Much as I love ballet, it does not easily move me, yet in this version in the death chamber scene,  Romeo dragged Juliet’s lifeless body around and had me weeping. I could feel Romeo’s anguish for his lost beloved and it moved me to despair too.

I have sung my entire life and am frequently moved by the music, as I wrote about some time ago: Gotta Sing .

I did take some art history courses in college, with a speciality in Renaissance art. My son took a painting  course in Italy in the summer of 2002, but of course, looked at the masterworks too. I told him to “see the art with my eyes”. He brought me a book on Giotto, the father of 3-point perspective.

We finally got to Italy in 2011, touring Venice, Tuscany, Florence and Rome. It was everything we’d hoped for, with wonderful guides in Florence and Rome. When Lorella, the Florence guide, took us into L’Accademia it was a quiet morning. We quickly walked through the entry galleries into the grand salon that holds Michaelangelo’s masterwork: The David. It truly took my breath away. Of course I’d studied it, seen a zillion photographs of it, but being in its presence, being close to it, was something else entirely and I welled up, just by the magnificence of it. Lorella looked on with approval. She could tell that I felt it in my bones, that I was moved beyond words. A mere mortal had sculpted this from sheer rock. I stood in the presence of genius and was humbled by it. (And the teacher in Florida who thinks this is pornographic and the teaching of it should be banned should sit in a corner with a dunce cap on; her thinking is from a different century. She should not be allowed near impressionable children.)

I’ve been active at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University for over 33 years and on its Board of Advisors for something like 25 years. The Rose was selected to host the U.S. Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, the granddaddy of art shows. Mark Bradford did all the artwork in our pavilion, as well as working with prisoners at a local prison to teach them how to make handbags that were sold locally. They kept some of the proceeds, some benefitted indigent people in Venice. That made an impact.

I spent five glorious days at the vernissage before the official opening of the show. With our interim director and several Brandeis art history professors and curators, we had insider access to all the exhibits with great people to explain all. We could wander off anytime we chose and our group, along with another museum (where our former director had now become the director) hosted an incredible gala at Cipriani, overlooking the Grand Canal. Extraordinary!

 

One artist really grabbed my attention. On May 11, 2017, Kristin Parker, our interim director took us on a tour through the Arsenale, a huge space full of invited artists. We stopped to see Lee Ming Wei. He is a performance artist. He collects old clothing from people and he and his assistant stitch up the holes in the clothing, thereby healing, or making the owner “whole”. The thread from the patch is then unspooled and attached to the wall near their workspace, making a web of thread – its own form of art that grows and changes.

Kristin knew this gentle man and spoke with him at length about his process and philosophy. Something about his story really struck me. He was a Chinese refugee who had lived in Paris most of his life, so he understood pain and displacement. The idea that by stitching up these torn garments, the owners could be healed really gripped me and I again welled up. Kristin noticed me – “Betsy’s having a moment”. She took me in her arms and comforted me.

Last autumn, the Rose hosted a one-man show for Peter Sacks, a brilliant poet and painter who emigrated from South Africa as a young man and now lives full-time on Martha’s Vineyard. The show was called “Resistance”. He painted collage-style portraits of historic figures from across the world, some still with us, most deceased, who have had the courage of their convictions to resist oppression or the status quo and promulgate change. The portraits depicted everyone from Harriet Tubman to Nelson Mandela to Alexei Navaly. They also included audio recordings of some of their remarks, read by famous people, projected into the gallery in a great wave of sound, though through an app on your phone, you could isolate each person’s personal narrative. As I write this, on August 4, 2023, Alexei Navalny, who has been imprisoned in Russia on trumped up charges since January, 2021, was sentenced to 19 additional years for “inciting extremism, rehabilitating Nazism”, and other ridiculous charges. He is trying to point out Putin’s corruption and is being silenced. His daughter, Daria, now a student at Stanford, was at the Rose opening last fall. She took in all the portraits solemnly and quietly said, “So few of them survived”.

Isn’t this what we all need these days? To have a moment, perhaps be comforted – “healed”; or open our eyes and learn something new? Great art should inform, teach, ask us to be vulnerable or even uncomfortable and challenge us. That should be what art can do, if we open ourselves to it.

 

 

People at San Francisco General Hospital emergency room had T shirts printed up that included the tag line: “as real as it gets”.  That pretty much summed up the big urban County Hospital experience where I was a medical student.   The ER was where lives in crisis ended up—there, or in prison, or sometimes both. People with gunshot wounds, overdoses, car accidents, fights, falls, intoxication and psychotic breaks would show up in the ER, often with a police officer or the EMTs–who knew all got to know the ER staff well.  Compassion, skill, and physical restraint of combative patients were all necessary.  There were almost always underlying psychosocial traumas the ER couldn’t begin to fix.

The intern I was assigned to was arrogant and over-confident.  I was shocked when he walked up to a person with an arm infection from drug use and, without warning, stuck a hemostat into the abscess to drain it, playing the medical cowboy.  It was a negative example I never forgot.

There were also standard medical emergencies such as heart attacks, strokes, pneumonia, asthma, burst appendices, miscarriages, rapes, diabetic ketoacidosis, broken bones and dementia.  Not to mention headache, back pain, work injuries, and high fevers in children.  The list was long, including visits for problems that were not emergent, maybe not even urgent, but maybe the patient didn’t have another place to go due to travel, insurance, language, understanding, time of day, or some other reason that made sitting in the ER waiting room seem like the best option.  Staff and administrators complain bitterly about this “inappropriate” use of the ER.

Working in a busy urban ER can be grueling physically and mentally, but for those who thrive on adrenaline it is a good fit.  Each day is different, and when a life-threatening case comes in, the whole team has to mobilize—nurses, physicians, respiratory therapists, lab, X-ray, pharmacy and clerks working to stabilize, treat, communicate with families and specialists, and move the patient on to teams in the ICU, the surgical suite, or hospital wards (or the morgue) as appropriate.  Emotions can be strong—the satisfaction of saving a life together, or losing one, or just going through an intense period together.  When the shift is over, and you have signed out to the next crew, you can go home with some sense of closure and start again when you return.  You may never know what happened to the people you saw.

I am not an adrenaline junkie.  I don’t bungee jump and don’t even like action movies or gambling.  The high stakes, unpredictability and intensity of working in an emergency room never appealed.  My interest in medicine was always primary care, public health, education, health promotion, community building and relationships over time.  It is not as glamorous or dramatic as acute and tertiary care, but it actually saves more lives to have a strong primary care and public health system.  The longer I worked as a family physician and saw what happened to people sent to specialists and treated in the ER or hospital, the more I appreciated our work.  We kept many people out of the ER.  There is also satisfaction in having someone’s trust, being able to interpret medical reports and recommendations, averting unnecessary interventions and picking up the pieces after the acute care episode is over.  Of course, there was never a clean slate at the end of the day, and I would have the privilege and burden of having people come back over time, trying to manage problems that never went away.

Nonetheless, I did intersect with the ER when I was on call and had to go there to admit a patient.  Always a bit of an interloper, I could still appreciate the pace and ordered chaos of the place, the ready access to labs and Xrays and specialists.  I also worked many after-hours clinics in the office, when people would be seen as drop-ins for a host of problems.  It could be a nice counterpoint to a schedule full of known patients with chronic conditions.  While not as hectic as an ER, I appreciated the variety and I did more procedures such as suturing cuts, splinting injuries, giving injections, assessing pregnancy concerns, or pulling a hearing aid battery out of an ear canal.  With just myself and a medical assistant, lab was limited, but I could assess urine, pregnancy or strep tests on site.  Sometimes people with more serious issues–a possible pneumonia or broken bones–would be sent on to the emergency room.  Occasionally people would come in with a true life-threatening emergency such as a suspected heart attack, and then 911 was our friend.

I never regretted choosing the primary care path and providing continuity of care.  But I have to admit that sometimes it was just incredibly satisfying to solve an acute problem and be done with it, to pull out that splinter and send the person happily on their way.