July 1, 2024
Good morning. Wrapping up.
Redux et finis: hospital visit
Not to belabor the hospital interlude, a few more vignettes that may elicit a smile. Well, OK, it does belabor it. I'll now be done with this topic, I promise.
Walk, walk, walk. That's I was told repeatedly after the surgery. (That seems to be a prescription common to several surgeries, in my experience with others who've had different operations.) One of the nurses was following the drill, urging me to walk, and I just looked at her. "Sure. You have on long pants, long sleeves, and a sweater, and you're telling me to walk around with this flimsy hospital gown." She laughed. I had a light jacket with me and I started wearing it over my gown. When Kathy saw that getup, black jacket plus flowing turquoise gown below my waist, and yellow hospital socks, she commented that she hoped I didn't start wearing dresses any time soon. We really are a fashion statement with the gowns and hospital socks, pulling our medicine pole with our IVs along with us as we stroll the halls.
Because of my hospital experience, I recalled from law school first-year torts class—I thought—that many years ago there was a lawsuit against a surgeon by a patient. (No, I didn't finish law school, but even 51 years later I remembered that there was such a case!) I could not remember any of the details so I asked my long-time friend and colleague Bob Stein (former Dean of the U of Minnesota Law School) if he knew of the case I was trying to remember. He found it for me, for which I am extremely grateful:
The case you may have in mind from your torts class is a Michigan case decided in 1930, Franklyn v Peabody. In that case, a surgeon doing surgery on a plaintiff's finger decided that in order to obtain the best results some fascia should be removed from a thigh of the plaintiff and transported to the hand. Although it benefitted the plaintiff, the court held that the doctor was not authorized to take tissue from the plaintiff's thigh and the action constituted an assault. [The vote on the court was 7-0 in favor of the patient/plaintiff!]
I was reminded of that case when Kathy told me that the surgeon told her that she—the surgeon—had removed my appendix in addition to fixing up the small intestine, because the appendix was impinging on the intestine. I don't have any plans to sue my surgeon for assault (and I told her that when I met with her for my two-week check; she was interested in the case and glad I wasn't suing her; it was a light-hearted exchange). Quite to the contrary: One of my classmates was rushed to the hospital about two months ago for an emergency appendectomy that she described as extremely painful and requiring a long recovery. I am pleased to have that potential medical threat removed. (I believe this kind of case—here, assault—is typically a matter of state criminal law, so can vary by state. I have no idea if the decision in this case remains a precedent relied on in Michigan courts nor do I have any idea what Minnesota law is.)
Walking the halls of a post-op recovery ward is not an intellectually stimulating activity. It also sometimes involves a modest level of pain. It occurred to me, as I composed this vignette, that I could have used my earbuds and at least listened to Minnesota Public Radio or something. It also dawned on me, as I composed this, that I had my earbuds with me while I was in the hospital, in my laptop case. What an idiot.
I don't know about you, but sometimes I have listless periods during the night when I can't sleep. If that situation continues for more than 15-20 minutes, I'll change venues: I'll go lie down on one of our sofas. (It works about two-thirds of the time.) I was listless the last night in the hospital, when I didn't want to be there. I was excited to get discharged, I'd had too much sleep and rest, and I didn't need any drugs. So I changed venues: I moved blankets and pillows to the couch under the window, across the room from the bed. The change didn't help me sleep but I was amazed at the number of lights I saw from that perspective. I counted 13 lights! Three along the floor, dimly lighting the room, and 10 lights from the medical equipment surrounding the bed. It was a rainbow: green, red, blue, orange. You don't see all those lights when you're *in* the bed. I wonder how long it's been the case that all these machines are in place around the bed. And how much they contribute to the cost of health care. (Of course, these are modest pieces; it's when one goes in for a CT scan or MRI that one sees the expensive equipment, over $1 million each, I was told.)
I composed a note to the hospital CEO commending the nursing staff for their outstanding care. I will send it as soon as I can figure out to whom I should address it. I learned many years ago that people in an organization are sometimes quicker to criticize than they are to commend. I decided to try to remember to commend at least as often as I griped.
In the course of conversation with friends of my age cohort, typically for me over meals or bridge, I and we don't think about or reflect our age. Of course we sometimes touch on the aches and pains of getting older, but the talk is otherwise no different from that we have had for years. We do not, in other words, appear or act (or think) "old." Coming out of this surgery, however, I have felt "old." Even Kathy commented that I'm walking around like I'm an old man. One reason I move gingerly is because the incisions remain sensitive. But I have worried a little that such a major physical insult to my body, at my age, might permanently take the starch out of me in some fashion. I had spinal column surgery when I was 41 and bounced back from that without any problem. It's hardly a novel observation that 72-year-old bodies do not "bounce back" from major surgery or injury with the same speed as 41-year-old bodies do, but it may be that they do not bounce fully back ever. I guess I'll find out.
Redux et finis: circles of friends
A couple of additional observations about the "circles of friends." Dunbar, you will recall, "defines meaningful relationships as those people you know well enough to greet without feeling awkward if you ran into them in an airport lounge. That number typically ranges from 100 to 250, with the average around 150." Here's the visual that I relied on:
I mention here a list of friends. I certainly do not keep such a list. Before my March 2024 epistle it was hypothetical. I suspect that like most of you, the only "list of friends" I had for years was my Christmas card list. In the 21st century, it is, of course, my Gmail contact list. I made up a list solely for the purpose of reflecting on relationships. (So I guess if you aren't on email, you aren't a friend of mine!)
It occurred to me later that a list of friends one might make, irrespective of whatever Dunbar circle in which they might fall, would likely change over time. As I contemplated my list, I realized that had I compiled it 10 years ago, there would have been 30 fewer names on it. In the last decade I picked up a number of friends from high school whom I had not interacted with in 50 years and I acquired a group of friends, want-to-be bridge players, in my role as bridge instructor. (To be accurate, they are now have-become bridge players.) All 15 of my deceased friends would have been alive, so there would have been a net difference of 15 fewer people. Even though those 30 people have been added to my circle of friends in the last five or six years, that doesn't make them any less valuable to me.
I am certain that if you reflect on your "meaningful relationships" over the decades of your life, you'll realize that some of those relationships have faded away.
I was surprised to read, in a brief article about losing friends as we age, that "lifetime connections that stand the test of time are rare." (The article, "They Unfriended Me??!! Coming to Terms With the End of a Friendship," is in Next Avenue, "a nonprofit, digital journalism publication produced by Twin Cities PBS (TPT).") Some of the friends on my list have been on it for 30-40-50 and even 60 years. Not counting relatives, counting married couples as one friend, and defining "lifetime connections" to mean regular contact and physical interactions at least from time to time, my list of friendships that have lasted 30+ years has 11 names on it.
I'm curious: Am I anomalous or do you have a handful or more of friends you've known for most of your adult life?
* * *
My friend who is one of the six
classmates who've constituted the group of friends for six decades shared my
last epistle with the members of the group. One wrote back (three of the six
guys are deceased):
[Gary] raises some really good questions, ones that have me searching myself on this topic. . . . I’ll just say a few things here. First, I’ve always treasured our . . . group. As I read Gary’s piece and ponder all of this, I’ve come to realize that I have grossly underestimated how rare our little group is. I guess I always figured this happened frequently. That rarity emphasizes again how special each individual in the group is. (Those that have gone before are still members in good standing.)
One might ask about the point of this scrutiny of categories friendships. In terms of the friendships themselves, there is none as far as I'm concerned; the relationships will stay the same or change as time passes without my categorizing them. The value of the exercise is partly the use of my brain: We can read in many places that intellectual stimulation helps to ward off dementia. I figure that anything that prompts me to do a little research and ponder a topic may prolong my wits staying around me. At least for a couple of additional weeks.
The other point that I neglected to mention is that there is ample research demonstrating that an active social circle contributes considerably not only to quality of life as we age, it also helps ward off cognitive and other decline. (Here's one small piece of a very large literature, if you want to read more: https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/social-isolation-loneliness-older-people-pose-health-risks.) Becoming a hermit is not good for your mental health. So it's worthwhile to keep in touch with friends and to socialize with them.
That's my lecture for today.
Gary
