An awkward visit from a colleague
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By the way, I know a Philly-based pulmonologist on the falculty at Penn that you should see. He was a former board member of the Pulmonary Fibrosis foundation and does a lot of research on IPF including drug trials. I can’t stress enough the difference between good but generalist pulmonologist and a key opinion leader in the specific disease.
He’s actually on our (Alpha-1 Foundation’s) Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee, we asked him to join specifically to get the viewpoint of an expert in a different disease added to our group.
“Don’t make me repeat myself”
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When I was at Duke the median (not average) wait was less than a month. That means fully half the people who were listed got their transplant within 30 days.
Outliers (such as myself) either had a low lung allocation score (they weren’t as sick as the others), or they had a lot of Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) Antibodies, which render many donors an impossible match, or they were very tall and had trouble getting a size match. A combination of those three factors made me wait a year, which was extreme at Duke.
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@jon-nyc said in An awkward visit from a colleague:
By the way, I know a Philly-based pulmonologist on the falculty at Penn that you should see. He was a former board member of the Pulmonary Fibrosis foundation and does a lot of research on IPF including drug trials. I can’t stress enough the difference between good but generalist pulmonologist and a key opinion leader in the specific disease.
He’s actually on our (Alpha-1 Foundation’s) Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee, we asked him to join specifically to get the viewpoint of an expert in a different disease added to our group.
His name is Dr Michael F Beers and he runs the Beers Laboratory for Epithelial Cell Biology at U Penn
“Don’t make me repeat myself”
- history
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@jon-nyc said in An awkward visit from a colleague:
@jon-nyc said in An awkward visit from a colleague:
By the way, I know a Philly-based pulmonologist on the falculty at Penn that you should see. He was a former board member of the Pulmonary Fibrosis foundation and does a lot of research on IPF including drug trials. I can’t stress enough the difference between good but generalist pulmonologist and a key opinion leader in the specific disease.
He’s actually on our (Alpha-1 Foundation’s) Medical and Scientific Advisory Committee, we asked him to join specifically to get the viewpoint of an expert in a different disease added to our group.
His name is Dr Michael F Beers and he runs the Beers Laboratory for Epithelial Cell Biology at U Penn
Thank you Jon -- we always try to connect with top docs. You're absolutely correct about the difference. I'll contact his office.
As for my cousins, I don't know whether they looked at transplants.
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Ha - I’ll be with 10,000 of them in May in San Francisco.
I’m actually speaking at the American Thoracic Society’s convention this year.
“Don’t make me repeat myself”
- history
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@jon-nyc said in An awkward visit from a colleague:
Ha - I’ll be with 10,000 of them in May in San Francisco.
I’m actually speaking at the American Thoracic Society’s convention this year.
Cool shit.
I spent a month on the pulmonary service back when I was in training (and another 6 months in the respiratory ICU). It was a remarkable time and I learned SO much physiology.
Probably the most intense time of my training - but it was so good.
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@jon-nyc said in An awkward visit from a colleague:
Ha - I’ll be with 10,000 of them in May in San Francisco.
I’m actually speaking at the American Thoracic Society’s convention this year.
So pleased to see this. Good for you, and good for them. Let us know how it goes. -
"Tom" dropped by this afternoon. Uninvited, he just "happened to be in the neighborhood."
We had a pleasant enough conversation, and his Alzheimer's was not really apparent. We talked about old times, etc.
And then, he seemed to forget how it was that we met, and when. And then, he started talking about his boy scout troop, figuring that I'd know the people he was talking about.
And then, I showed him a picture that I took this week. It was me, and 4 guys that we used to work with. We had the "geezer's breakfast."
He was surprised that I knew these people - even though Tom, myself, and the 4 other geezers worked together for about 6 years. Hell, one of them was his partner for 10 years.
He was the guy who got me the job in private practice, and he had no recollection of that either. However, he was able to remember his service in the Navy, in the mid 1970s.
Sad.
He was always "weird," but this is sad.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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My dad's mom had one of the worst cases her doctor had ever seen. Everyone took it pretty hard, but the way my dad and my uncle handled it was pretty incredible, all things considering.
Ditto what Mark said.
