I think I dodged an enormous bullet.

It was in early 2021, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. A gastroenterologist friend asked if he could pass my name to “Mr. Ed” a businessman seeking a medical director for a proposed new laboratory for diagnostic COVID testing. (My friend did not know Mr. Ed well and had no role in the project.) As a pathologist, I was among the most trained and best suited to be a laboratory medical director, and I told my friend to let his contact know that I would be interested.

Pathologists are physicians trained in the art and science of creating, maintaining, and managing excellent medical laboratories. We are probably not the ones running the chemistry analyzer, examining petri dishes for bacteria, or isolating DNA for next-generation sequencing. Technologists perform those duties. But in cooperation with our clinical colleagues, pathologists choose which tests the laboratory performs and how the results should be interpreted. The clinicians usually leave it to us to decide the methodology for conducting the tests and whether the results are valid and can be reported.

When Mr. Ed phoned me, I explained that as the medical director, I would ensure the laboratory space was safe and adequate, the technicians were qualified, the test kit was accurate, and appropriate controls were run routinely. I would also regularly review results for trends or other anomalies suggesting inaccurate data. The lab would need state certification, with a long-term goal of accreditation by the College of American Pathologists, the industry’s gold standard.

“No,” Mr. Ed replied. “The test is idiot proof so we don’t need you to do any of that. All I want from you is to come in once a week and sign that you showed up. You’ll be compensated generously.”

“Mr. Ed,” I responded, “you’re talking to the wrong man for this job. I am respectfully declining your offer, and I recommend you rethink your business plan.”

I don’t know what happened to Mr. Ed and his planned laboratory. But just this week, Zishan Alvi, a Chicago-area businessman pleaded guilty to Federal charges that his laboratory was releasing inaccurate COVID results to patients whose specimens had inconclusive results or had not even been tested. The Federal government was billed for all these tests. As a result of these infractions and his guilty plea, Mr. Alvi faces up to 20 years in prison.

This is fraud a competent medical director in a well-managed laboratory would prevent.

I doubt that Mr. Alvi was the same person as my Mr. Ed. It is quite likely that more than one Chicago profiteer saw the same pot of gold in widespread, barely-regulated COVID testing. But the gold rush couldn’t last forever.

Had I accepted Mr. Ed’s offer, I might have been up to my neck in questionable COVID swabs and their consequences. But because I declined, no legal bullets are headed my way.

Sometimes the move you don’t make turns out to be the best move of all.

Could I have predicted Sam and Sean?

I have never been a great prognosticator. I don’t know which apocalyptic TV prophecy will come true, I lose when I try my hand at sports betting, and I waver repeatedly when trying to predict the outcome of the upcoming Presidential election. But I came so close to seeing into the future when I wrote my first play last year.

White Collar, the 2-act play manuscript I struggled to complete is still languishing on my desktop. Despite a well-received reading on the Facebook group States of Play, I have yet to move on from the harsher critique from a theater industry professional; his concerns about the setting, the dialogue, the actions, and the resolution. I can’t set my mind to attempt the necessary rewrites.

But my play came so close to predicting the future. My story revolved around three characters based on convicted fraudsters: financier Bernie Madoff, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, and digital currency manipulator Sam Bankman-Fried. In my world, I imagined all three doing time in the same minimum-security federal penitentiary, trying to convince each other, and themselves, that their financial malarky had never hurt anyone. In the final scene, we see tragically the falseness of those assumptions.

My scenario never occurred, and it never will, since Madoff passed away in 2021. But there has been an unexpected juxtaposition of prisoners. Sam Bankman-Fried has been assigned a different notorious prison-mate. It has been reported that Sean Combs is sharing a dormitory with Mr. Bankman-Fried in New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center. It is not stated whether or not they are sharing a bunk.

While Combs’ alleged criminal conduct (racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking) is not directly related to financial manipulation, I wonder if there are other things that Combs and SBF discuss with each other. I doubt SBF’s life has been one of sex parties and drug excesses, but he and Combs could still swap stories about life, love, riches, and culpability.

I may never get around to reworking White Collar, but if I do I will be more creative in choosing my main characters. They won’t all be financial miscreants. After all, you never know who might be in the cell right next to you.

The Stephen King novel “Revival” leads me to memories.

I have been listening to Stephen King’s Revival, expertly narrated by David Morse. So far there is no fantasy in this novel and that is how I prefer Stephen King —just the facts, ma’am. Early in chapter two, the protagonist reminisces about his life from ages six to nine, 1962 to 1965. Since that matches my timeline (I was born in 1956), I began to think back to my experiences at that age.

That was a significant time in my life. For the first two years, I attended an Orthodox Jewish Day School. Coming from a family of minimally observant, secular Jews, I was as out of place in that school as a Pope in the woods. By 1964, my non-stop nagging of my parents forced them to enroll me in 4th grade at Eugene Field, one of Chicago Public School’s finest. This was much more to my liking and I thrived.

World events imprinted into my young brain in those years. I recall the tears at the Kennedy assassination in November of 1963, and the further horror as Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald.

My family had its own loss that November. My grandfather perished after a long battle with bladder cancer. Papa was a quiet, kindly, Austrian immigrant. My mother mourned him for a very long time and I felt his absence as well.

1962 was the dawn of my interest in professional sports. I attended my first baseball game and inadvertently became a North Side White Sox fan. That choice has cursed me from Bill Monbouquette’s no-hitter against the White Sox in August of ‘62 until this year’s record-smashing disaster. Being asked as a little boy what my favorite team was should never have led to so much heartache.

The sports story I enjoyed came in 1963 when the Bears played in the NFL championship game. I sat on the 151 CTA bus clutching a small transistor radio to my ear listening to the Bears take on Y. A. Tittle and the New York Giants. As we neared my grandmother’s Argyle Avenue home, I heard the Bears win, and the Monsters of the Midway were World Champions. I celebrated with a little cheer.

I learned about rough-and-tumble family-splitting politics in 1964, well before Donald Trump took the stage. My uncle Poldi ended a shouting match about the Johnson-Goldwater presidential election by throwing his brother-in-law out the door of his third-floor apartment. A gift-wrapped bottle of whiskey, flung by the enraged Poldi, followed the brother-in-law down the three long flights of stairs. We all heard the crash as it splattered below.

Also in 1964, I enjoyed my first international airplane trip, a Swissair DC-8 direct flight to Switzerland. My uncle, grandmother, and an ambulance welcomed me to Zurich; the ambulance was there because I felt light-headed before landing. The Swiss may be neutral, but they are always prepared!

From those years I remember James Bond and Goldfinger, Rex Harrison and My Fair Lady, and Mary Tyler Moore’s “Oh, Rob!” on The Dick Van Dyke Show. TV host Ray Raynor was my friend every morning and afternoon.

So far, the memories of the young man in Revival have mirrored my innocence and wonder. Until I listen to more of the novel I won’t know what happens to him as he grows. I only hope that his life becomes as blessed as mine. But I fear monsters, human or otherwise, will rear their heads, showing him that the world has a dark side too. After all, would Stephen King write it any other way?

What do you remember from your young formative years? Leave a comment or message me.

Which are your favorites?

What is more universal than a song by The Beatles? If you’re a Baby Boomer like me, Beatles’ music is in your blood, your brain, and practically your DNA. If you belong to a later generation, you likely grew up hearing your parents or grandparents singing it to you, humming it in the shower, or tuning into the Beatles satellite station during family road trips.

There are plenty of other artists my generation loves—The Stones, Zeppelin, Neil Diamond—but The Beatles, both as a group and as solo artists, reign supreme. This got me thinking about how my blog posts mirror Beatles’ songs.

My recent posts have focused on personal transportation: my long-gone (and gratefully forgotten) navy blue 1972 Mercury Comet and my recent roller-coaster decision between a sedan and an SUV. The obvious soundtrack for those posts? Paul singing Drive My Car. Beep, beep!

I haven’t always been the perfect driver, and I’ve written about a traffic stop (or two… or three). Naturally, Lovely Rita the meter maid was in my head when I wrote those stories.

As for my posts about my life in medicine—from medical school to UroPartners and, ultimately, to retirement—those could easily be dedicated to Doctor Robert. Although, in fairness, John’s Dr. Robert was more into hallucinogens than healing.

Remember the early days of my blog when I wrote about Barb and me building our forever home? Like most construction projects, it was filled with setbacks—financial, material, you name it. From day one of the project until we moved in with only a temporary occupancy permit, our builders were constantly Fixing a Hole.

Sometimes, I write nostalgically about growing up on Chicago’s North Side in East Rogers Park. I’ve written about my childhood home on Farwell, the laundromat on Lunt, and the sights and sounds of Sheridan Road. But Morse Avenue comes alive most vividly in my stories, with glimpses of Ashkenaz, the Jewel, and Charles Variety Department Store. Paul remembered his Liverpool youth with his Penny Lane. Morse Avenue tales are my Penny Lane.

And, of course, many of my posts are simply snapshots of the here and now—A Day in the Life. I love to turn you on.

Rocketing on a Comet

For the last few weeks, I have been listening to Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver’s novel about life in the western part of Virginia (not West Virginia) as seen through the eyes of her young protagonist. The region was coal country until it wasn’t, and nothing replaced the coal as a source of sustenance.

I am enjoying the book, but I didn’t personally relate to its tale of sprawling families, foster care, Friday night football, borderline poverty, and Ford pick-up trucks until a minor character drove up in a Comet. And I was back in 1972.

How many of you have heard of the 1970s-era Mercury Comet, the unheralded, slightly upscale step-brother of the very popular Ford Maverick? A dark blue 2-door Comet was the first car my family owned, the first car I ever drove.

How did my parents, perpetual bus and EL riders, wind up buying such an unsung vehicle? My sister Linda, then 21, needed a car to commute to a teaching position. Her fiance and future husband Alan had a contact at a suburban Lincoln Mercury dealer and owned a Comet himself. It was Alan’s suggestion that led to our Comet purchase.

I was 16 years old. The Comet appeared at just the right time for me. At first Linda and I shared the car, but it became mine alone when Linda and Alan married. Other than occasionally chauffeuring my parents (doctor’s offices, Walker Bros. Pancakes) I could use it as I pleased.

What a joy to have a car! I no longer needed to take the Skokie Swift to visit my suburban girlfriend. Drive-in movies became a possibility, too. College became an easy commute, and I could drive home from my job at the service desk of the local Jewel after closing the store at midnight.

Unfortunately, the Comet was not built to last. The first hint of trouble was a broken belt on the Dan Ryan Expressway coming home from a wedding in the far south suburbs. A friendly service station got us back on our way.

A bit later, when my friend Michael and I steered my blue magic carpet on the Indiana Toll Road toward New York, the clips holding the muffler snapped. The exhaust system dragged along the concrete roadbed for miles, sparks flying until we could reach the next exit and another friendly service station.

The worst to happen to the Comet was not of its own doing. During a severe rainstorm, the commuter parking lot at Northwestern University flooded. After a morning of classes, I returned to a car with water in the interior higher than the seat cushions. Although the car was cleaned and detailed, no amount of car freshener could hide the lingering musty odor.

It was the odor that finally convinced Barb and me that this burned-out Comet was no longer in our orbit. We sold it to a man with a more forgiving nose and replaced it with a Pontiac Phoenix—another disaster waiting to happen, and a story for another day.

I’m looking forward to reading more about young Demon Copperhead, and I hope all his life and car choices were wise ones. I’m rooting for him to succeed, and a young man needs a good set of wheels!

What was your first car? Leave a Comment below!

James Earl Jones has died.

When you hear his name, does Darth Vader’s voice immediately come to mind? Or do you think of Jones’s famous baseball monologue in Field of Dreams? Or is he (or your children’s) forever Lion King?

I love all those, but for me, Mr. Jones will always be Othello. He starred in a production at the Goodman Theater in 1968, when I was 12 years old. It was my introduction to Shakespeare, and my introduction to recognizing the power of an actor just reaching his prime.

I was a frequent visitor to the Goodman, seeing plays at both the children’s theater and the main stage as a guest of my aunt and uncle. Paula and Poldi would treat my sister and me to dinner at the Italian Village, before we walked the few blocks to the old Goodman Theater building, adjoining the Art Institute of Chicago.

We saw Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a parable about fascism that is frighteningly relevant today and You Can’t Take it With You, a classic comedy by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. But it is Othello that has always stayed with me.

I don’t believe Jones was well-known when I saw him perform. His first Tony Award would come a year later. But to a 12-year-old kid who was becoming fascinated with the theater, every move he made, every word he uttered, had an impact on me.

Did I follow the entire plot of the play? Did I recognize the evil in Iago, the helplessness of Desdemona, or the weakness in Othello? I am sure I did not. But the power of the play and the performances, especially of the lead actor, were undeniable.

So, while like all of you, I loved Star Wars IV-VI and the revelation that Luke was Darth Vader’s son. And yes, Mustafa was magnificent and the beloved baseball soliloquy so moved me that I suggested our son use it for a required recitation in one of his English classes. But unlike most of you, I got to see and hear James Earl Jones live on stage proclaim “I kissed thee ere I killed thee: no way but this, Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.”

Top that, Darth Vader!

I’ll do my best to get your support.

I was awake before sunrise on Labor Day, assembling my running gear. I quickly donned my shorts, tee shirt, running shoes, and earphones. On the way out the door, I filled my water bottle, grabbed my phone, and wrapped my watch around my wrist. I tuned into my 1000 best rock songs Sirius station, set the watch to “Outside Run,” and hit the street at dawn.

Listening to tunes from Hotel California to Sweet Home Alabama I circled through the neighborhood at a steady ten and a half minutes per mile. Three times I passed a dead skunk in the road, its odor pushing me forward with each lap. I sidestepped the remnants of the ancient tree that last week’s violent storm had smashed across the sidewalk. Other than the skunk and tree debris, the roadway was mine. There were no neighbors, dogs, or coyotes to share my route.

I swore I had done my last run two years ago. My body parts do not recover as easily from the pavement pounding as they did in my youth and middle age. Pedaling on my aging elliptical machine is a gentler way to raise my heart rate.

So why was I stressing out my hips, knees, and ankles at 6 a.m. on a holiday morning? September is here, and in two weeks I plan to participate with hundreds of others in the Zero Prostate Cancer 5K fundraising run through Chicago’s Lincoln Park. I have reversed my “no running decision” and am in training.

I am doing this because of my deep personal and professional relationship with prostate cancer. My dad, Harold Raff, bravely succumbed to the disease when he was 80 and I was 37. In the final 16 years of my career, I spent countless hours at my UroPapartners microscope, reading thousands of prostate biopsies and diagnosing prostate cancer. Almost two years after retirement I still see the malignant glands in my sleep.

Through UroPartners, I discovered Zero Prostate Cancer (in Chicago, formerly SEABlue.) This nationwide organization provides “access to lifesaving information and support, connect with others in the prostate cancer community, and take action to ZERO out prostate cancer.” Currently, over 2300 men and their families are benefitting from the support, education, and advocacy of Zero. The organization is a blessing to men with prostate cancer and their loved ones.

With SEABlue and Zero, I have participated in prostate cancer fundraising events for at least a dozen years. Some years I have run, some years I have walked, and last year I watched the rain. Whatever my plans, I have always asked my readers for support and you have responded.

I want your help and don’t mind stressing out my various body parts to earn it. By clicking this link you can go to the Zero Prostate Cancer website. There you can donate to me and the Raff Riders team. You can help us surpass our fundraising goal. Each contribution is very much appreciated by the universe of prostate cancer victims and their families.

I’ll keep lacing up my running shoes and I know you will continue to support this worthy cause.

Thank you.

Click HERE to donate.

A pathologist’s reflections.

Forget Doc Brown and Marty McFly’s DeLorean. I’ve got my music, my very own time machine.

For example, yesterday I was heading east on Lake-Cook Road, trying to be on time for a serious pickleball match. Little Red Corvette, the Prince hit song from the early 1980s came on the radio and suddenly I forgot about slams and dinks and was transported back in time. As the chorus played on, I envisioned myself parking my old Chevy in the dark, winding four-story garage next to Evanston Hospital. I was in the last year of my pathology residency in suburban Chicago and the sounds of Prince were everywhere.

That four-year residency program was the best part of my medical education. Following the intense years of medical school, the residency consisted of four laid-back years in the hospital laboratory learning anatomic (autopsies, diagnosing disease in biopsy specimens, surgical specimens, and pap smears) and clinical (chemistry, hematology, microbiology, etc.) pathology.

Although I learned the basics of my professional skills at Evanston, my memories yesterday were not of pathology, but about the people I spent those four years with, the ones who trained me and the others who trained with me.

Most prominent was Hartmann Frederici, a South American native of German descent. He was chairman of the department and was known for his strict Prussian demeanor. We clashed over autopsy coverage but I did my best to show him the respect he craved.

I am sure you have met people who can never say no, and wind up so overworked that the report they promised to review, or the recommendation they swore they would write end up buried under a pile of other papers and promises. That describes Tom Victor, who led the Anatomic Pathology teaching core. Good-hearted and caring he was in a perpetual state of frenzy. Dermatopathology was his passion; much of what I know came from his teaching.

Tom’s hard work was matched by the efforts of the ever-caffeinated Mike Kaufman, continuously checking his watch to avoid being late for his next gig, and Miriam Christ, Mike’s serene counterpoint and crackerjack diagnostician. Their contrasting styles gave the department balance.

Arlen Brodin, a general pathologist and a fierce proponent of Occam’s Razor, was the titular head of the residency program. His instruction to me “to look at that slide until you know it is prostate cancer” paid off in my ultimate career in urologic pathology. Sharon “Holy Guacamole” Bugaj and Serpa Schwartz, a petite Scandanavian pathologist who said little but always knew the answer to a tough breast biopsy question, pitched in from their perch at Glenbrook Hospital.

The pathologists and scientists who trained us in clinical pathology had varied reputations. Volker Dube, who ran the blood bank, was renowned among the residents for taking a pair of scissors and literally cutting up our autopsy reports. That was years before the phrase “cut and paste” entered our vocabulary. Our young chemist, Lem Bowie, was the only black man in the department. In his research lab, I analyzed red blood cell membranes, looking for a cure for sickle cell anemia. Sadly, Lem passed away from colon cancer, another disease over-represented in young black men.

Den mother to the residents was Eileen Randall, our microbiologist. Randy taught us to recognize every pathogenic bacterium and every deadly fungus. She held study sessions for us in her north suburban home, feeding and teaching us in her backyard. She was looking forward to retiring and moving into a woodsy cabin, but like Lem Bowie, succumbed to colon cancer before she could follow her dream. The entire department mourned her, and I vowed I would choose to retire too soon rather than too late. Two years ago I followed through on that promise to myself.

I trained with more than a dozen fellow residents while at Evanston. We were a friendly and cooperative bunch, celebrating Toxic Taco Tuesdays and Thursday afternoon tea, all while sharing questions for future Board exams and preparing for anticipated careers. Bob, Mike, Candy, and many others were supportive comrades, while George’s gift for gab was essential in making “a long story longer.” I didn’t foresee George being the first pathologist I would hire when I created the UroPartners Laboratory more than 20 years later.

Such wonderful memories. For time travel, I’ll take a little red Corvette over a souped-up DeLorean any day!

Last weekend Barb and I were at the Cadillac Palace Theater for our first show in this season’s Broadway in Chicago subscription. We had 5th-row center seats for Back to the Future, the musical based on the iconic 1985 movie. The show is high energy and the performances top-notch, but the show-stopper is Doc Brown’s souped-up DeLorean time machine.

She roars onto the stage and flies high above it while jetting Marty McFly from 1985 to 1955 and back again. Whether plutonium-powered or lightning bolt-activated she screams to 88 mph and booms across the decades. The audience loves her.

But the time-traveling DeLorean is not the car most on my mind. A few weeks ago I wrote about my struggle in deciding how to replace my aging and cranky Audi sedan. Like Marty McFly, I was shuttling back and forth, but for me, the decision was whether to buy another sedan or my first SUV. You may recall I landed on something neither fish nor fowl, an Audi A6 Allroad, a throwback to station wagons of the ’60s popular on the West Coast.

Then Barb saw one on the street and reported “That car is ugly. And weird. You cannot buy that car.” So we canceled the order and reviewed our notes. We considered our wants, needs, and finances. I am here to report that two Saturdays ago I joined SUV Nation.

We bought the most basic level of an upscale brand SUV with a few thousand miles on the odometer to help control the cost. Black-on-black, it is stylish and shiny.

Driving the SUV has been an even bigger adjustment than moving to a new house seven years ago. I must get used to the higher cabin, the “tight” ride, and the powerful engine. It’s wider than my old Audi, making it a tight fit in the garage. Then there is the sticker shock of filling the fuel tank with 20 gallons of premium gasoline. Where are plutonium-powered cars when you need them?

Despite the drawbacks, I enjoy my new ride. And having an SUV has already proved worthwhile. Over the weekend Barb and Laury were going furniture shopping for Laury’s remodeled home. It’s a good thing I came along. Two large pieces of art that never would have fit in a sedan (or a weird station wagon) slid easily into the SUV’s rear compartment. I’m sure that huge capacity will also be useful when hauling bikes, golf clubs, or both.

It’s not a DeLorean. It won’t take me back in time, but I am sure it will help us make many future memories.

Finding the Meaning in Retirement

The first time I remember the switch flipping was during my Freshman Honors Algebra class in high school. Most of my classmates had studied algebra in 8th grade and were already proficient manipulators of operations, equations, and variables. I was encountering these concepts for the first time and I was struggling. I asked my uncle Poldi, an engineer, for assistance, and worked with him for an hour in his dining room.

And suddenly, I got it. I don’t know if Poldi was responsible, but a switch in my head clicked on; algebra came into focus, enough for me to raise my grade from a D to a B+ in a mere ten weeks.

That’s how I operate. Malcolm Gladwell has his 10,000 hours until mastery rule, but that’s not how I progress. Things don’t come to me gradually, they come to me in a rush, all at once—as if a finger is pushing a button deep in my frontal lobe.

Prostate pathology came to me the same way. Suddenly I had the utmost confidence that I could diagnose prostate cancer. That confidence never failed me.

I never know when to expect a click. They have come in the middle of a college physics exam and the fourth frame of a bowling line. A month ago it happened on a pickleball court—though admittedly a new paddle helped flip the switch.

Clicking never happened in tennis; I never had a sudden surge in my skills and never gained mastery. I fear I am headed for the same sad outcome in golf but I have no way of foretelling if on some glorious, sunshiny day, the grip and the swing and the follow-through will all come together and I can say “I got this.”

There is one more thing I am still waiting to get, waiting for a click. It is more of an abstract, metaphysical one. I have been retired for almost two years. When asked how I like my current circumstances, I always truthfully respond in the positive. I retired at the right time with the right motivation. Yet I still await the light to turn on to understand what retirement means and what is it for.

Yes, I keep busy with golf and pickleball. I read and I write. I have a pathology-related consulting gig and participate in a generous smorgasbord of volunteer activities. Barb and I do some traveling and babysit as needed.

But so far those activities don’t give me the answer to the purpose of my retirement or how I can make it meaningful. The web offers advice (find your passion, set goals, etc), workbooks are available, and workshops too. Although it seems like a lot of work, maybe I will travel down that route. Or maybe I’ll wait for something to click, just like high school algebra. It’s the rest of my life and this time I want straight A’s.