From the Microscope to Life’s Bigger Picture

Some pathologists are balkers. They dither and debate, unable to decide until every morsel of information has been individually processed, every unlikely diagnosis ruled out. When they hear hoof beats, they don’t just think of zebras; they think of zebras that have been extinct for 100,000 years. You cannot run a pathology department with a batch of balkers.

Michael Kaufman, MD, who passed away last month, was not a balker. If he had a motto, it was “Let’s get this done. Now.”

Mike was one of the attending physicians during my pathology residency at Evanston Hospital in Chicago’s northern suburbs. I was at Evanston for four years. He was there for almost 40.

There were many outstanding pathologists at the hospital during my training. But none were better than Mike in evaluating the big picture. The answer to a diagnosis on a biopsy wasn’t necessarily in the minute details of each slide, but rather, as he put it, in the gestalt. The moment the first field of a slide hit the microscope stage, he had an impression of the diagnosis and knew what he wanted to do to confirm it.

Mike was rarely wrong, and even less often inefficient. With caffeine as his fuel, he would glance at a stack of slide trays, calculate the number of slides they contained, and set a time limit for completing that afternoon’s work. When a rafter of residents was slow, Mike pushed them along like a golf ranger urging a slow foursome to pick up their pace.

He needed to be that efficient. Mike was the master of the side hustle before the term even existed. He always had some place else he needed to get to, or a case he had to study for his sideline medico-legal consulting services.

He was happy to spread the wealth, hooking the residents up with Medical Records gigs, and even ear-piercing at the local Carson, Pirie, Scott’s Department Store. We were also his off-site autopsy service, performing post-mortem exams at other North Shore hospitals. If not for Mike, I never would have driven around town with formalin-fixed body parts in the trunk of my car—something I never did mention to Barb.

I learned how to be a better pathologist, time manager, and entrepreneur from Mike. Those lessons guided my career. But my most vivid memory is of him walking through the lab with little Jamie on his shoulders—showing us all that joy belongs alongside work.

Mike was never a balker, in medicine or in life. May his memory be a blessing.