Death of a distant old friend

I received a card in the mail today that was both joyful and sad. It let me know that an old friend of many years died in December. And I do mean old. I have no idea of her age but I would guess she was at least in her late eighties and maybe early nineties. I have not seen her in fifty years, and I didn't know her that well then.
My husband-to-be, my brother, and I were all in school in a small town in Missouri, they studying osteopathic medicine and me working on a graduate degree in English. My brother in particular became good friends with a faculty member who also owned a working farm. The man used to treat me, and I remember how calloused and tough his hands were from farm work. One day he abruptly said he could no longer treat me but gave no explanation. I felt I had somehow displeased him. I also remember he predicted whatever I would die from would be ennervated from a specific area in my upper back which was weak--a thought I still remember and try to put out of my mind.
I saw less of his wife. Indeed, I clearly remember only one occasion. We all went to the farm for breakfast, and she served fried cheese, among other things. I loved it, though my brother tonight said he didn't particularly like it but it was the first thing he remembered about her too. I have since tried it but haven't been able to duplicate it.
We moved on from that town, John to Colorado, and Joel and I to Texas. A few years later we heard that this woman had left town and her husband suddenly in mysterioius and what turned out to be tragic circumstances. She moved to Massachusetts, built a new life for herself, and never looked back.
But every year I got a Christmas card from her. In tiny handwriting she detailed world travels and adventures and asked about my writing. I would reply at some length--something I don't always do with Christmas cards. I enjoyed hearing from her and was always amazed--and flattered--that she kept up the correspondence and felt a connection to me. This was the first year I didn't get a card, andd the one I received today, from a friend of hers, confirmed my suspicion. She died in mid-December. I suspect I was on a mailing list or in a card file someplace and the friend knew to send the card.
Today's card consisted only of a lovely poem that spoke of her enjoyment of people and life, her travels, her motorcycle, and the many people who shared her life. A picture on the front shows a happy, smiling woman (I wouldn't have recognized her, and I doubt she'd have recognized me) against a montage of photos of her life, including a clear one of her late husband in his army uniform. Between the poem and the pictures, I know she had a happy life after she left Missouri, and I am glad for her. I told John I hated to throw it out because it seemed like throwing away her life. I'm saving it for him.

Emotion vs. logic--where do you draw the line?

I spent most of yesterday and much of today reading proofs on a 40-year history of the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine. I was reading an online pdf which to me is really difficult, and I wished for hard copy. Forty years ago, my ex-husband was founding faculty; soon after the college opened, I became director of communications. Later my brother was dean of clinical sciences. That school, that grew from nothing like Topsy, was our lives, except for our children. I wrote an early chapter for the book titled "Humble Beginnings" and reading about the early years was an exercise in nostalgia. Reading about the present status of the school was an eye-opening realization of how far it's come. Today it is the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center and includes several schools--public health, physical therapy, programs for physicians' assistants, etc.--and many research centers. It's nationally ranked well and has received great recognition for its research programs, especially in forensic medicine. What began on the unfinished fifth floor of a hospital, with an anatomy lab in a garage apartment, is now a large campus with at least five tall and sleek modern buildings (I may be miscounting). It's a remarkable achievement in forty years, and I am much impressed.
So it was bittersweet this morning to open the paper and read that the board of regents of UNT had okayed a plan to pursue adding the MD degree and another separate school for MD students to the overall health science center. All the remarkable growth, the great accomplishments from humble beginnings, have been built on the back of an osteopathic medical institution. And now they want to add an MD program?
I can't figure out whether my strong objection is logical or emotional. I am a child of the osteopathic profession--my father, brother, ex-husband, and countless uncles were DOs. I remember too well the days when DOs were second-class physicians, scorned by the MD community. Students, mostly young men from the East who couldn't get into an MD school, entered DO schools. Even today I know of a friend whose husband would never tolerate her seeing a DO. Once, in the 1970s, I ghosted a book for a doctor known as "Mr. Osteopathy of Texas." The title? The Quack Doctor. He said he was supposed to write a history of osteopathic medicine in Texas but that sounded dull and he wanted to write something that would get people's attention. Today, none of that is true--my nephew went through osteopathic medical school on an army scholarship and has trained at such institutions as Walter Reed; osteopathic students and graduates rotate through nationally prestigious MD hospitals as interns and residents. It's almost a level playing field.
The logical part of my objection is that if they've made such wonderful gains as an osteopathic institution, why add the MD program? The emotional part of me fears that the DO program will suffer and become second-rate, losing everything that has been gained.
Dr. Tom Yorio (PhD), provost of the health science center and a well respected research scientist, wrote the most compelling case for the MD program I've yet read, but I remain unconvinced.
The addition of the program still has to be approved by the Texas Legislature, which chartered TCOM to provide primary care physicians, especially those that would practice in rural communities. Osteopathic medicine has a record of educating primary care physicians; a much higher percentage of MD students go into research or specialties and sub-specialties. I don't know about writing my legislators or not--my small voice would be lost on the wind, but I may do it anyway. Meantime, I can envision my dad, longtime president of the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, holding his head in his hands in dismay. See? I told you it's an emotional issue for me.

Osteopathic Medicine

Today I finally got serious about the chapter I am to contribute, called "Humble Beginnings"--and believe me, they were humble--to the 40-year history of the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine. Reading the 20-year history, which I wrote, obviously 20 years ago, took me on a real trip down memory lane. As the preface says, I was born into the "osteopathic family" as was my brother: when we were kids we could count 18 D.O.s in the famiily--uncles, fathers, even a cousin or a cousin married to one. John's father was one of four brothers who studied osteopathic medicine; my father was the president of the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine for 40 years. No wonder I married an osteopathic student! People today still ask me what osteopthic medicine is, which astonishes me in this day and age. Basically (and if John is reading this i hope he thinks I got it right) it's a system of healing developed by Andrew Taylor Still in the nineteenth century in Kirksville, Missouri. Still discovered, according to legend, that a headache would ease if he lay sideways in a hammock, with his head hanging over the edge and the border of the hammock putting putting pressure on the back of his neck just under his skull. Eventually he came to the theory that many bodily ills were the result of misalignment of the body, hence osteopathic manipulation (of which chiropractic medicine is an offshoot). The theory has been refined over the years, and osteopathic physicians are now trained in all the sophisticated specialties of medicine such as surgery, neurosurgery, orthopedics, and on down a long list (look at the phone book of any large city). Unfortunately, manipulative medicine has disappeared from the repetoire of most D.O. physicians, although that was John's specialty toward the end of his practicing years--he's now ten years or so retired. Theoretically, though, the osteopathic emphasis is on health as a way of life and treating the body so as to achieve maximum well-being rather than treating the disease. Aha! Preventive medicine, which M.D.s came to late in the game.
Back to TCOM--as I reviewed my earlier book, I ran into all kinds of memories and people now gone--George Luibel, who had the idea of a Texas college in the 1960s and the vision to make it work, enlisting two other doctors as co-founders; there was a saying going around in those days, "Let George do it"--and he did! Legislative work, dealings with the American Osteopathic Association, all those things. He was also a good friend of my father's and the man I went to when my back hurt--I can still hear him demand, "Who in the hell taught you to sit that way?" when he discovered me in his waiting room with my feet twisted around each other--his motto was "Eyes and toes in the same direction all the time."
And Ray Stokes, the pr man who was the college's first employee, and did all the organizational work; Dr. Henry Hardt, the first dean, a wonderful man who faced doing what few have done--building a medical school from scratch--and did it with a sweet dispoisition but a German hard-headedness. My good friend Dr. Mary Lu Schunder, who taught anatomy to twenty students that first year in a garage appartment.
I am not really a part of the osteopathic community these days. I've been divorced from my surgeon/husband for almost thirty years, and many of my friends in the profession have died--though I remain close to a few. Wednesday I'll pick up Charles and we'll go to the TCOM retirees lunch--he likes to take me as his guest, and I see a few people there I recognize from the "old days." I guess I'll always think of myself as part of the community, though the college has now grown to a sprawling campus with several hundred students and faculty. From humble beginnings indeed . . . tomorrow I'll call a couple of friends who were students in the second class and try to interview them over the telephone. I'd put this project off, but now I've got my teeth into it, I'm enjoying it. Memory Lane is a good place to stroll.

A cancelled trip

Well, bummer. I was half packed to go to Frisco tomorrow for Christmas with Jamie, Mel and the girls. Jordan and Christian are going to celebrate their anniversary in Dallas, and I would ride back and forth with them, though there was a lot of controversy about where and when Jamie would have to pick me up and drop me off. He is frantically busy and finally called tonight to say, "This just isn't going to work." Maddie has a basketball game in the morning, Edie has a b'day party in the evening, he's still trying to get out of his old office and into the new one, the girls are asking him about putting up their tree, and he sounds like a pressure cooker, so I perfectly understand. But, yes, I'm disappointed. I don't guess I'll get the girls' Christmas presents to them before Christmas, and that's a disappointment. I called Jordan to tell her the wouldn't have to worry about me tomorrow. She called back in five minutes and asked if I wanted to go bar hopping with them--just kidding. But she said they would like to come for Sunday supper. A sweet, sweet gesture to make up for my disappointment, and I am grateful. My good friends, Jean Walbridge and Jim Clark, will join my church on Sunday, so now I can be there for them which is also a bonus. And I have page proofs of a novel to read, so I'll be busy. I decided tonight to leave unpacking the suitcase, washing up the final dinner pan, and all that until tomorrow when I'll have a lazy, lazy day.
Tonight I had a holiday supper for Mary Lu and Charles so that I could give them both their gifts. Fixed a sort of elaborate version of beets and greens and Dover sole, with orange dill gremolata. They both taught at the original Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (now the UNT Health Science Center) where there is now a move afoot to grant the MD degree as well as the DO, so that gave us plenty of fodder for discussion. I am a child of osteopathic medicine--father, brother, ex-husband, countless uncles and quite a few cousins plus for years I worked in osteopathic colleges doing secretarial and pr work. It's a hard thing for all of us to hear, but tonight just before they came one of my former physicians who remains a friend (and who reads this blog) called to talk about it, and he said the most important thing to me: Fort Worth and Texas have to decide if they want to have the premiere osteopathic college in the country, producing fine family physicians who are desperately needed in Texas and elsewhere or an MD school producing specialists. In my mind I add a second-tier MD school, although I'm sure that's not what the current president believes. It made me think of TCU Press--I know we're never going to rival Oxford or Chicago or some of the other major presses, so I've worked to develop us into a big splash in a little pond and to develop areas of specialization where we can be outstanding. I think that's what UNTHSC should do. It will be interesting to watch this work out.
So here I am with a lazy weekend. I hope to make the laziest possible use of it.