Five years of teasing come to fruition

In the fall of 2000, I taught an Honors Geometry class that remains legendary. Two Ken's, Two Chris', an Ali and Allie, Conrad the 8th grader and the smartest kid I ever taught and Becky, Elana and Sarah. Ahh, Sarah H. You've met this family before, actually about this time last year, her father invited me to play Cypress Point. Well, ever since Sarah and I have known each other, I have given her a hard time due to the fact that in 9th grade, she wanted to be a socialite, be written up in the Nob Hill Gazette and dreamed of her Debutante Ball. We all know that I can and could not resist giving Sarah a hard time. To her undying credit, 9th grade Sarah took it in stride and it became a constant source of laughs. Well, last night, the big night occurred. Sarah was presented to society and I had a massive cultural experience.

First off, here is me in a tuxedo, just after I had dressed myself at the base of Nob Hill.

First time in a tux in probably a decade

The evening started crazed because of a goodbye dinner for a friend who is moving to LA because of a job transfer. After getting dressed right there in the street, I was dropped off at the Fairmont. Except the ball was at the Westin St. Francis, so I had to catch a cab and I arrived to watch the presentation of about 25 young women with five minutes to spare.

Sarah and Alex (her escort and another one of my former students) during the post-presentation walk, which was quite complicated.

There were about 500 people in the room, many of them classmates of the women being presented. The presentation is exactly what you think. Each young woman comes out center stage and is met by an escort of her choosing. She curtsies, is escorted down a short flight of stairs and then handed off to her father for official presentation. Done.

Our protagonist and her two time high school math teacher

I need to no longer be in front of the camera, especially when next to Melissa B. (FYI, Dad, this is Frank's neice)

It was a wonderful evening as it was a look into San Francisco Society. Let's chalk it up to anthropology!

The first of three

This week has been and will continue to be a busy one. Two stints as a medical patient, trying to sort out the medical issues regarding my foot surgery and the visit of three, count them three, of my out of town friends, and there is little down time. Well, except for right now.

Ian M. is a long time friend of mine from my Seattle days. Currently living in NYC, he was out on a West Coast swing, San Francisco being the last stop before heading back to NYC and a career in real estate. Last night, he, Jennifer K. (the longtime roommate but alas, no longer) and I went to dine at a San Francisco institution, The Original Old Clam House. We ordered a clambowl and a meleneza for the three of us and the piles of mussels, clams, crab legs, prawns and scallops was massive. For those of you locals, I highly recommend this place. I've been wanting to try the Clam House since I moved here since I drive by it every single day on my way to work, but it took six years to finally go inside. I should have done it earlier.

Ian and Jennifer at The Original Old Clam House

Afterwards, we continued our dining pleasures to get ice cream at another San Francisco Institution, Mitchell Brothers. For those of you who followed the link, check out the flavors. It's a good thing I have some will power to resist ice cream because I live a mere three block walk from this shop.

Lastly, on the medical front, Kaiser has officially denied my request to have my hardware removal done by Dr. B in Seattle. Since the estimate I received were I to think of paying out of pocket for this surgery was $9,000, I'll go ahead and meet the doctor Kaiser has contracted to work on these types of surgeries. This Kaiser doctor is a former president of the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons, I have to believe he's the bees knees and can do my removal without much difficulty.

Emily, Alicia and others

Can it be that it is already four years past 2001 and my first set of graduating advisees from HRS are now college graduates? Oh my! So last night, two women from that group, along with one of their friendboys and Scott went out to Moki's for dinner.

Emily and Alicia

A sign that they are growing up and maturing? They were only four minutes late. So for those of you who have been waiting with anticipation, here's the moment you've been hoping would come sooner rather than later:

Scott (aka S&M) revealed

I am a medical conumdrum

The first year medical students have spent the year working on learning the practical aspects of being a physician. Every doctor has to know how to give basic examinations, such as taking a medical history, cardio-pulmonary or neurological just to name a few. To test what they have learned, UCSF sets up mock-clinical exams for the first year students. So, last Thursday, yesterday and tomorrow, I have and will spend four hours in the afternoon being prodded, poked and touched by first year medical students. I was selected because my friend H. Carrie Chen runs this first year class and knows my medical history and thought I would be interesting for the students to examine because they end up finding things that throw them for a loop.

The first years perform a musco-skeletal exam on me in front of a teaching doctor who evaluates them. As they perform the exam, they are palpating (touching and feeling) the bones, joings and ligaments along my shoulders, back and knee all while asking me if I have any pain. In addition, they ask me to do range of motion exercises as well. I am wearing a hospital gown as we do it, but during some portions the exam, I take it off.

One of the last parts of the exam, is to test for reflexes in the knee and ankle, which I have learned tests for spinal cord function in the L4-L5-S1 area. This is where things get interesting. As they hammer at my knee, nothing happens. It totally throws them for a loop because everything else has been going so well up to that point. After five or six whacks at my knee, the doctor or I will tell them that they are doing it correctly and that I have dimishished reflexes in both areas, bilaterally.

When the exam is done, the doctor, student and I sit and talk about techniques they could have used or if they tried to inspect something in the wrong place. For example the students always miss the biceps tendon. When they say they've found it, I am looking at them knowing that they've TOTALLY FAKED it when they said they found it. But what the doctor asks them to do is to make any other observations about me. What the doctor is trying to get them to do is ask about the huge scar on my left side. Only 25% of the first years even ask about it and if they do, I am allowed then to tell them the story of my accident. Once all that is on the table, the first years have a context for the lack of reflexes because my spinal fusion is at L1-L2-L3 and my reflexes are controlled by the spinal cord below my surgery. The moral of the story for first year doctors? If you look and ask, you may have the answer given to you.

Summer Break and taking one for the team

The Monday morning after graduation is when the final faculty meeting occurs. We say good-bye to those who are retiring or leaving the school. Faculty recognition awards and chairs are presented to those teachers who have served in an extraordinary capacity and the following years committee assignments are revealed. In the past, I have served a two-year elected stint on the professional development committee, one year of two-years on the faculty compensation committee and three or four years on the admissions committee. In addition, when I was serving as department chair, I served on the curriculum committee and department council. Next year, however, I am chairing the Annual Fair. For many years, it was headed by my wonderful colleague Mr. Chu, who left this past year for greener pastures. To give you an idea as to how much of a headache bring the point person for the fair is, I have been relieved of EVERY OTHER outside of classroom duty. All I have to do is the Annual Fair.

So, what is this Annual Fair? The fair takes place on the evening of third Friday of October. The clubs and groups of the Middle and Upper Schools organize booths and games for our Lower Schoolers (K-5). In talking with some of my students who were at one time Lower Schoolers themselves, they remember the Annual Fair being one of those things they greatly looked forward to. What's in it for the older students? Ahhh, you see, the fair operates on little red tickets. Lower School parents purchase both an entrance fee to the fair as well as wads of little red tickets. Every red ticket collected by a booth or game represents money in the operating budget of a groups account. So, months of September and October will be all Fair, all the time.

As I left school Monday afternoon, I felt my annual tinge of sadness at the school year being over. As a kid, I was that kid who cried when school was over in June because I loved school and I always found summer kind of boring. I still feel that now, but at least now summers are usually filled with things to do. So, stay tuned for some of my summer adventures. Can it be a year already that this blog has been in existence? The genesis of this blog was to provide family and friends to keep track of me during last years cross-country road trip, but now has taken on a life of its own.