That’s How Life Works

From: James Algiers

Subject: A Bit of the Past

Date: July 7, 2014 at 4:38:46 PM CDT

To: Louis

Dear Louie,

Received the note from your daughter that you are doing quite well and that you continue to read the "dribble" which I send you. It has become a welcome task to sit at the desk and try to type. Of all the course offerings during high school, the course which I should have taken was the typing course offered by his majesty, Harold Allen. I believe I would have learned a valuable lesson and my life would have been different. Instead of spending a year on Attu, repairing teletypes, I might have spent it in some pleasant office in California or someplace warm, sunny, and pleasant. But then, I never was too smart and chose "shop arts" by Gib Mahr rather than typing. Of all the poorly contrived courses, that was probably the worst; but so gehts.

Anyhow, this weekend on arriving back home, the messages on the telephone contained a note from our friend Bob. Am sure you can recall Bob - he was a year or two younger than us - he’s a guy who has spent an interesting life. After school, he enlisted in the Marines, transferred to the AirCorps, and ended up flying the big bombers which during the '50s protected the northern Canadian air space from the nuclear threats of the USSR. He flew six engined bombers all night long over the Canadian-Alaskan territories, always on the track of going north when the whistle blew, prepared to drop the atomic bombs on Russia. He did that until one summer in Wisconsin - in fact it was one summer day while visiting Hartford with his family on furlough, he suddenly developed a cardiac arrhythmia. He came to the ER. I saw him there and ordered an EKG indicated atrial fibrillation. The mere presence of A.F. on the EKG paper changed his life completely. He no longer was eligible to fly. He then spent the nights at home, became an instructor, and eventually left the Air Force. When I made the diagnosis of A.F. I felt sorry for him. Little did I know his wife would have canonized me - finally he was able to get out of the assignment of flying over the Soviets with a bomb bay filled with nuclear hell.

And to think that I felt apologetic and sorry for making the diagnosis.

Anyhow, Bob is still with us, has a large family, and lives comfortably. His last job was that of some form of provost for security at a large university. When I spoke with him on the phone while he was leaving this morning, I told him I had two questions. 

The first was, "How's your fibrillation?"  

“No problem.”

The second was, "How are your two front upper central incisors?”

(I don't imagine you would recall, but when we were seniors, Bob, who was the star of the football team came back into the huddle, smiled, and blew a mouth full of blood through the space which previously was occupied by the upper central incisors. The absence was noticeable, his Mother was impressed the next morning at breakfast.)

Today, Bob clicked his teeth together and said the replacements continued to function "very well.”

You know, Louie, I for many years was in a position to watch the life's progression of many of our friends and classmates. I was able to work through the problems of families and friends and watch the natural history of many Wisconsin diseases. Cirrhosis and alcoholic neuropathy, auto accidents, miscarriages, mental health issues, and despondency did not pass our class. And I was in a position to know the pre, present, and past natural history of the diseases. Family issues became predictable. 

One of our classmates had a family history of congenital Huntington's disease which caused most of the boys to fall off the roof because of incoordination. 

The emotional family alcoholic dominance did cause profound depression in one of the most popular girls, and another classmate did die on the railroad tracks the night he didn't make it across the Colgate intersection. And who would have thought that one of our classmates would, for two years, treat his cancer of the rectum with increasing doses of hydrogen peroxide in water; such nonsense. 

And who do you think had the privilege of treating Bill on the sixth of July for his acute myocardial infarction, watching him die in 1958 when all we had was oxygen and morphine sulfate, and the documentation of a stethoscope? My God, it was primitive. And yet another friend from the football team was a patient who finally gave up cigarettes after the pulmonary nodule flared into the invasive predicted tumor, and then there was our skinny friend on the team,  who developed diabetes when he gained 150 pounds ending up at 285 and in ketoacidosis. Who would have thought that our smartest friend would develop progressive Parkinson's dementia, and good-looking Barb would spend her life in widowhood, losing her husband to CLL, now a treatable disease.

Ya ya Louie, "So gehts im leben." 

That’s how life works.

And tomorrow, if it doesn't rain, I am again going to play nine and score again in the mid-forties. I do dream.

Fraternally, 

 Jim

Watch this letter on YouTube with Abbey Algiers and host Sally Jensen.