Updated Letter from Doug Levine
January 8, 2007
Dear David and Donna,
After getting some news from Chris Surawicz in late Fall, I learned a bit more from Patty Blount when she called me two nights ago. This prompted a call to Cy Rubin today, and somehow I was able to also contact your very busy son, Michael. I’m sure I don’t have a complete picture, but it is enough to know the past many months have been very hard for you. For this Barb and I are deeply sorry.
I wanted to reach out with this note. I expect family, friends, and colleagues in the Seattle area have been giving their best wishes to you both. But I wanted you to know for those of us living more than a day’s drive away from the Pacific Northwest, like Barb and me, the feelings are no different. You are in our thoughts and prayers.
When Barb and I first moved to Seattle, upon my starting the GI Fellowship in 1982, we had been married for less than a year. The move took us away (far away) from family in the Northeast for the first time in our lives. And so, when we were invited to your home, as part of what was a tradition of welcoming first-year fellows with a warm, family-like social occasion with the more seasoned trainees and faculty, the stress of a challenging geographic move was greatly lessened. Barb and I were so appreciative of this, and of the atmosphere you, David, helped create and sustain in the UW GI Division in forging a collegiality that is unfortunately rare in the medical academic setting and other workplaces. Seattle and the University of Washington ultimately became home, and together with so many people are very much missed.
I need for you to know how thankful I am for the experience I was lucky enough to have in Seattle, as a trainee, faculty member, and bicyclist. I know I’ve consciously tried to adopt best practices from my teachers, mentors, and colleagues. I am certain that the way I approach my current job role has a lot to do with the discipline you promoted - the care in history-taking with patients and the rigor in experimental design. It is hard not to want to emulate intentions of kindness, which seemed at the core of your being. If ever there was a time and demand for humanitarianism in Medicine, it is now. I’m grateful for how you modeled humanity - it was something I noticed, and learned to less self-consciously embrace.
But David, how you could make us all laugh! Whether on rounds, in meetings, over lunch, and in GUT course faculty prep sessions. And how this so complemented an insistence on quality and excellence by providing a humorous perspective when other faculty might just get burdensome with strict, solemn demands. And what was great was your demeanor, obviously professional but also a bit sly, which invited like behavior – in moderation, of course – that was nicely OK with you. I recall I was just “promoted” to a 3rd year of Fellowship at a time when it seemed, to me at least, that 2 years was the usual deal. You were leading a clinical discussion, and introduced a case history – not as “This 72-year-old man” or “This 72-year-old male” presenting with some symptomatic complaint – but as “This 72-year-old fellow ….” And there was something in your eye that made me exclaim, “So just how long is this GI fellowship?”
Moving on to your supervision of trainees during endoscopy, do you recall a patient with the rather memorable name of V.B.? Well, I do. You were overseeing my performance of a flexible sigmoidoscopy and the requisite rectal biopsies. Having successfully executed the acquisition of the first biopsy, I, in my infinite wisdom supported by 1 or so years of extensive GI fellowship experience, announced to the patient that I was about to take the second biopsy. Mr. B. responded weakly, “You, you already took a biopsy???” Whereupon he, despite his horizontally oriented bearing on the procedural table, promptly fainted and had a seizure. I, of course, in my infinite wisdom supported by 1 or so years of extensive GI fellowship experience, dutifully froze while you went into action. I am, as I’m sure Mr. B. would be, eternally grateful for your institution of human restraint – not only in keeping him from falling off the table but in resisting the urge emanating from every fiber in your being to politely and gently (and, undoubtedly comically) chastise me for my unnecessary babbling with Mr. B.
Bicycles. Beloved bicycles! In the late 1980s, Barb and I were cycling on North Seattle neighborhood streets when I tried to “hop” a ledge between the street and a driveway in order to get onto the sidewalk. Unfortunately, my front wheel “bit” in the crevice between street and sidewalk, causing the bicycle to continue straight away down the street and me to catapult off onto the concrete. Barb, who was behind me, could only see me with my head bouncing several times on the pavement before finally stopping. Actually, it wasn’t my head, but my helmet on my head that was doing the bouncing. I was up and about from the fall immediately, neurologically intact, and mainly concerned about the gravel embedded in my elbows and Barb’s shaking after observing the severity of the fall.
Why do I tell you this? Well, in the summer of 1982, when I learned I lived near the Burke-Gilman Trail, there was a rather novel pro-bicycle culture in Seattle, and my much respected Chief of the GI Division pretty much bicycled to work every day, I started doing the same. One day, you, David, asked about whether I wore a bicycle helmet. I can’t recall if my negative response reflected Boston-area bravado or banal sheepishness (neither Barb nor I ever wore helmets when we cycled back East), but what I recall is that you made a rather compelling case for wearing proper headgear. I think you may have lent me a helmet until I could purchase one – which Barb and I both did do soon thereafter. And we have NEVER mounted a bicycle without helmets strapped on since that time. Fortunately, neither of us has sustained another fall like the one I took in Seattle (not counting a few episodes of “keeling over” at intersections when I can’t disengage my toe clips in time). But whatever brains I have left to make what I understand to be reasonably valued intellectual contributions at work are in large measure attributable to your support of wise preventive practice and its enforcement with me. No joke. And thank you.
From what I understand, your health circumstances are certainly no joke. But I hope you can draw strength not only from the love of those who surround you, but from your own sense of humor, your own brand of cunning wit. I pray you will be the beneficiary of better luck and again have the chance to feel much, much better in the very near future. Good luck. Godspeed.
Sincerely yours,
Doug
Doug Levine
Dear David and Donna,
After getting some news from Chris Surawicz in late Fall, I learned a bit more from Patty Blount when she called me two nights ago. This prompted a call to Cy Rubin today, and somehow I was able to also contact your very busy son, Michael. I’m sure I don’t have a complete picture, but it is enough to know the past many months have been very hard for you. For this Barb and I are deeply sorry.
I wanted to reach out with this note. I expect family, friends, and colleagues in the Seattle area have been giving their best wishes to you both. But I wanted you to know for those of us living more than a day’s drive away from the Pacific Northwest, like Barb and me, the feelings are no different. You are in our thoughts and prayers.
When Barb and I first moved to Seattle, upon my starting the GI Fellowship in 1982, we had been married for less than a year. The move took us away (far away) from family in the Northeast for the first time in our lives. And so, when we were invited to your home, as part of what was a tradition of welcoming first-year fellows with a warm, family-like social occasion with the more seasoned trainees and faculty, the stress of a challenging geographic move was greatly lessened. Barb and I were so appreciative of this, and of the atmosphere you, David, helped create and sustain in the UW GI Division in forging a collegiality that is unfortunately rare in the medical academic setting and other workplaces. Seattle and the University of Washington ultimately became home, and together with so many people are very much missed.
I need for you to know how thankful I am for the experience I was lucky enough to have in Seattle, as a trainee, faculty member, and bicyclist. I know I’ve consciously tried to adopt best practices from my teachers, mentors, and colleagues. I am certain that the way I approach my current job role has a lot to do with the discipline you promoted - the care in history-taking with patients and the rigor in experimental design. It is hard not to want to emulate intentions of kindness, which seemed at the core of your being. If ever there was a time and demand for humanitarianism in Medicine, it is now. I’m grateful for how you modeled humanity - it was something I noticed, and learned to less self-consciously embrace.
But David, how you could make us all laugh! Whether on rounds, in meetings, over lunch, and in GUT course faculty prep sessions. And how this so complemented an insistence on quality and excellence by providing a humorous perspective when other faculty might just get burdensome with strict, solemn demands. And what was great was your demeanor, obviously professional but also a bit sly, which invited like behavior – in moderation, of course – that was nicely OK with you. I recall I was just “promoted” to a 3rd year of Fellowship at a time when it seemed, to me at least, that 2 years was the usual deal. You were leading a clinical discussion, and introduced a case history – not as “This 72-year-old man” or “This 72-year-old male” presenting with some symptomatic complaint – but as “This 72-year-old fellow ….” And there was something in your eye that made me exclaim, “So just how long is this GI fellowship?”
Moving on to your supervision of trainees during endoscopy, do you recall a patient with the rather memorable name of V.B.? Well, I do. You were overseeing my performance of a flexible sigmoidoscopy and the requisite rectal biopsies. Having successfully executed the acquisition of the first biopsy, I, in my infinite wisdom supported by 1 or so years of extensive GI fellowship experience, announced to the patient that I was about to take the second biopsy. Mr. B. responded weakly, “You, you already took a biopsy???” Whereupon he, despite his horizontally oriented bearing on the procedural table, promptly fainted and had a seizure. I, of course, in my infinite wisdom supported by 1 or so years of extensive GI fellowship experience, dutifully froze while you went into action. I am, as I’m sure Mr. B. would be, eternally grateful for your institution of human restraint – not only in keeping him from falling off the table but in resisting the urge emanating from every fiber in your being to politely and gently (and, undoubtedly comically) chastise me for my unnecessary babbling with Mr. B.
Bicycles. Beloved bicycles! In the late 1980s, Barb and I were cycling on North Seattle neighborhood streets when I tried to “hop” a ledge between the street and a driveway in order to get onto the sidewalk. Unfortunately, my front wheel “bit” in the crevice between street and sidewalk, causing the bicycle to continue straight away down the street and me to catapult off onto the concrete. Barb, who was behind me, could only see me with my head bouncing several times on the pavement before finally stopping. Actually, it wasn’t my head, but my helmet on my head that was doing the bouncing. I was up and about from the fall immediately, neurologically intact, and mainly concerned about the gravel embedded in my elbows and Barb’s shaking after observing the severity of the fall.
Why do I tell you this? Well, in the summer of 1982, when I learned I lived near the Burke-Gilman Trail, there was a rather novel pro-bicycle culture in Seattle, and my much respected Chief of the GI Division pretty much bicycled to work every day, I started doing the same. One day, you, David, asked about whether I wore a bicycle helmet. I can’t recall if my negative response reflected Boston-area bravado or banal sheepishness (neither Barb nor I ever wore helmets when we cycled back East), but what I recall is that you made a rather compelling case for wearing proper headgear. I think you may have lent me a helmet until I could purchase one – which Barb and I both did do soon thereafter. And we have NEVER mounted a bicycle without helmets strapped on since that time. Fortunately, neither of us has sustained another fall like the one I took in Seattle (not counting a few episodes of “keeling over” at intersections when I can’t disengage my toe clips in time). But whatever brains I have left to make what I understand to be reasonably valued intellectual contributions at work are in large measure attributable to your support of wise preventive practice and its enforcement with me. No joke. And thank you.
From what I understand, your health circumstances are certainly no joke. But I hope you can draw strength not only from the love of those who surround you, but from your own sense of humor, your own brand of cunning wit. I pray you will be the beneficiary of better luck and again have the chance to feel much, much better in the very near future. Good luck. Godspeed.
Sincerely yours,
Doug
Doug Levine
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