My My Fair Lady for 46 Years

To celebrate our 46th wedding anniversary Monday, I took my fair lady Gilda to Lincoln Center Sunday to see the revival production of My Fair Lady. I am in no way implying that under my tutelage Gilda transformed into the accomplished women she is today. But I will say that I have been there all along as she grew from a young woman who barely knew her way around the kitchen to as close to a gourmet cook you can be without certification. 

But cooking is in many ways a minor accomplishment compared to her professional development. I’m a fairly accomplished person in my own right. Despite my parents’ trepidation at my career choice as a journalist, I achieved some success as a newspaper reporter and then a business magazine editor and publisher. In terms of intellectual development and immeasurable contributions to public welfare and health, however, my story pales compared to Gilda’s.

When we first married in 1973 Gilda had a degree in political science from Brooklyn College, our joint alma mater. After moving to Seymour, Conn., part of my beat as a reporter for The New Haven Register, her degree qualified her for a job with a budding new industry: selling cable television hookups. It was a no-brainer. Cable offered some 20 station options versus the one to three most people in Seymour and the other towns of the Lower Naugatuck Valley could receive in their homes.

Not surprisingly, after a few months Gilda sought a higher calling. She fulfilled a decade old ambition to become a nurse. After two years she graduated at the top of her class at the University of Bridgeport and immediately was hired by Yale-New Haven Hospital. 

Offered a position on any patient floor, Gilda chose the newborn intensive care unit, a pioneering discipline that treated distressed babies born in a region roughly 100 to 150 miles around New Haven. She and a doctor would travel by ambulance to stabilize and then transport a newborn, often the size of an adult male’s hand, back to the NICU in New Haven. She worked there for two years.

What I didn’t mention was taking that job in the NICU was the start of a pattern of healthcare employment that has been central to her career. Prior to working in the NICU, Gilda had no experience with newborns, let alone those with complications so debilitating that she would come home semi-traumatized and in need of withdrawal through discussion over dinner. Of course, hearing about babies with unformed intestines, heart related issues or some other defect usually related to their premature birth was not the kind of dinner conversation I wanted to hear, so I stifled her release outlet. 

After we moved to Westchester Gilda again took a position without prior experience, this time as a step-down nurse in the Intensive Care-Cardio Care Unit at Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville. She left that job for the most important one any person can have, as a mother to her (our) children. 

During those next seven years she supplemented her mothering with part-time work as a pre-natal and post-partum instructor and as a nursery school teacher. In one area, she helped expectant and successful mothers understand and adapt to the changes their bodies were undergoing. In the other she helped shape their progeny.

Seeking a full-time position after Ellie started school, in early 1987 Gilda went for an interview for a post she admitted she was not qualified for. She went, she would tell you, because I suggested it would provide experience sitting through an interview. She got the job, serving for the next nine years as the research coordinator for the infectious disease department of New York Medical College and Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla. 

The ID department studied three of the most volatile illnesses of the time—hepatitis, Lyme Disease and HIV. From knowing virtually nothing about any of those diseases Gilda became expert in each of them. For example, she was part of the team that discovered HIV could not be transmitted through body sweat. She coordinated the Lyme clinic at the medical center. And, during those professionally challenging years she found time to serve two years as co-president of our children’s school PTA and also earned her Family Nurse Practitioner’s license.

Her next major job placement came in another area for which she lacked experience. Three spine surgeons at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan hired her in June 1998 to do pre- and post-operative patient assessments. In time, Gilda learned how to read MRIs, X-Rays and other diagnostic tests better than most doctors. Her skills were so appreciated by the surgeons that the transfer of their practice to Mount Sinai Medical Center was contingent upon their ability to bring Gilda with them.

Nearly 21 years after beginning as a neophyte in spine-related medicine Gilda retired as an expert earlier this month. For almost five decades she counseled the infirm and those who needed assistance. On numerous occasions she saved lives, mostly for friends and their families unrelated to her expertise in spine or infectious diseases. She became a “go-to” healthcare resource. She is now free to carve out new challenges, for I am sure she will not idly let her energies go unstructured. 

Forty-six years ago there was no way either of us could foresee how Gilda would spend her life. I have been blessed to have accompanied her ride. I am so proud of My Fair Lady.  

Rescue, Triumph, Disaster and Irony

Rescue: Has this ever happened to you? You’ve set up your DVR to record a weekly TV series. All goes well until you discover, too late, that the season finale, the ultimate fadeout or cliffhanger, was not recorded. And that it will not be rebroadcast until months, months!, later.

You can ask Gilda—that’s happened to us more times than I care to recall, the last being for the 10th episode of the inaugural season of Better Call Saul, the prequel to Breaking Bad. I cannot figure out why it repeatedly happens. Why, after diligently recording nine episodes of a series, does the DVR mysteriously end its mission before the last show? Does Cablevision surreptitiously sneak into our DVR settings in the stealth of night to thwart our viewing pleasure? 

I checked the TV listings. AMC was not re-airing the finale. I checked the On Demand menu. AMC offers programs, but not Better Call Saul. I searched the Internet. No luck. Netflix advertised Better Call Saul; I couldn’t find it on its Web site. We called Netflix but the customer agent said it would be months before it would be available. So why did Netflix advertise it? She had no idea.  

We had given up hope until we our salvation stepped forward in the shape of our tech-savvy son-in-law, Donny.   He advised buying Chromecast ($35 at Costco) and then downloading Plex on our iPad ($4.95). Voilá. $40 and  hours of frustration later, courtesy of Donny’s tech expertise we were further enlightened to the development of Jimmy McGill into Saul Gooodman.

Now we can rest easy as we await Season 2.

Triumph: It would be hard to find a more glowing review of a performance by a Broadway star than the one Ellen Greene received from Ben Brantley of The New York Times for the age-defying, dazzling revival of her more than 30-year-old signature role as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, the musical about a plant (Audrey II) from outer space hungry to eat its way toward human domination (http://nyti.ms/1R7CDBu). 

Audrey is one of my favorite musical theater characters for a very simple reason—Ellie played the part in a Play Group Theatre production. Wearing a short blonde wig, short skirt, push up bra and studded, stiletto black heels, Ellie hardly looked like the young teenager she was. She spoke in the high-pitched voice Ellen Greene used. When she sang, suddenly Seymour wasn’t the only one who knew Ellie was talented beyond her 14 years. 

After the play ended its short run, I salvaged one of her shoes as a nightstand memento. It’s been there for almost 20 years. 

Audrey was the first of many leading and featured roles Ellie enjoyed in PGT productions as well as plays produced by White Plains High School, a Scarsdale summer production company and the Skidmore College theater department. 

Disaster: I can empathize with Laura Bassett, the defensewoman on England’s World Cup soccer team who accidentally kicked the winning goal into her own net in a semifinal match against Japan. During my middling career as part of the intramural soccer team of my Brooklyn College house plan, Knight House, I inadvertently headed a ball past our goalkeeper. Unlike Bassett’s miscue, mine did not alter the final outcome. We already were losing quite badly when I parked myself under a high kick, hoping to head it away from our goal line. Instead, the ball skipped off the back of my head into our net. 

Not one of my finer athletic achievements. It ranks up there with my seventh grade basketball debut. Inserted in the second half, I snagged a defensive rebound. I looked for the outlet pass. Someone called out, “Here.” I threw him the ball. He scored an easy layup. You probably guessed by now—he was on the other team. The coach quickly took me out of the game before I could do more damage.

Irony: Two decades ago, before she became a specialist on spine surgery, Gilda was an active medical expert and researcher of Lyme Disease as part of the Infectious Disease staff at Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla, NY. She co-authored numerous studies on the debilitating ailment. She set up the hospital’s walk-in Lyme Clinic.

Now, 20 years later, how ironic that we were first in line at the clinic last Wednesday evening. She had been feeling significant fatigue for a few days, with a headache and a stiffness in the neck, when a large, telltale red rash, shaped like a bulls-eye, appeared under Gilda’s right shoulder. She knew immediately what it meant. To confirm the diagnosis, and rule out any of the four or five other diseases deer ticks can convey these days, a trip to her old stomping grounds was in order. 

She was greeted like a returning war hero. Veteran staffers kept stopping by her treatment room to reminisce and update. Newer personnel came to see the person who started the clinic so many years ago. Gary, the head of the department, even suggested she return to the clinic, but he readily agreed when Gilda responded, “Orthopedics pays a lot better than infectious diseases.”

A day after starting the two-week regimen of doxycycline Gilda was back to being her old self. She could just as easily have prescribed her own medication, fulfilling the admonition, “Physician, heal thyself.” But it was a worthwhile trip back in time and place to see the fruits of her labor in practice, this time from the patient’s perspective.

This Magic Moment

Perhaps you heard him on some sports radio talk shows today commemorating the 20th anniversary of the day he, Magic Johnson, one of the premier basketball players of his and all-time, stunned the world by announcing he was HIV+. Unlike other HIV+ celebrities, such as Rock Hudson, Johnson was at the peak of his career, leading a vibrant life. He was still an active member of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Magic’s admission helped transform the public perception of HIV patients. Johnson became the face of HIV and its successful treatment.

Twenty years ago Gilda was the research coordinator of the Division of Infectious Disease at NY Medical College/Westchester County Medical Center. She studied Hepatitis, Lyme Disease, and HIV, contributing to numerous research papers.

Among the first studies she worked on was one that directly affected Magic Johnson and all other athletes. The study explored whether the HIV virus could be transmitted through sweat. To gather the sweat, HIV patients were placed in steam rooms. Their sweat dripped into plastic gloves to be tested.

The bottom line: HIV was not passed on by sweat. It was safe for Johnson and other athletes to continue playing together without fear of contracting HIV from the sweat of an infected player.