The Year of the 21-year-old Goaltender
It’s not enough to say they are a different breed. They must be crazy to stay in the way of a piece of rubber traveling in your direction at the speed of light. They can hardly walk on a rubber mat leading to the rink, while they have to maneuver with a blistering accuracy in […]
The Ups and Downs of the Performer
Just imagine…. Imagine yourself in front of 18,000 people in a tightly packed arena. You have been waiting for this opportunity throughout your entire life. The moment you get in, crowds start screaming and rarely get quiet during your three-hours performance. Most of these people are friendly, but some are not. You are going to […]
Would You Have the Courage to Stop Treatment of the Advanced Cancer?
We’ve known each other for close to forty years. She was a good friend of mine and a former wife of my close buddy. I visited her in the delivery room after her son was born. Her marriage didn’t work out, and she ended up by herself. And then she found out, she had breast […]
Reading Poetry Makes you a Better Person
We were sitting waiting in the conference room for our course to start. It was a marketing seminar for writers. Sue sat next to me, and somehow we started a conversation about the language. She writes poetry and obviously the language is her tool and mastery of it is her paramount objective. She writes mainly […]
Panegyric on my daughter and life in New York
If you can make it there… Fred Ebb Heralded as the capital of the world. The biggest port of entry for immigrants to the United States. I know, forty years ago, I flew to New York on a big PAN AM 747 sitting next to a catholic nun. It was foggy and we couldn’t land. […]
Is the Violin a Devil’s Instrument?
On that night, in the year 1713, I dreamed I had made a pact with the devil for my soul. Everything went as I wished: my new servant anticipated my every desire. Among other things, I gave him my violin to see if he could play. How great was my astonishment on hearing a sonata […]
How to Take Stress while Doing Surgery
By the end of my medical school, I was set to become a cardiologist. At that time, a prominent cardiology department in Warsaw Medical School even offered me a position. Then I had a conversation about my future with a professor who was the head of general surgery powerhouse, well known not only in Poland, […]
Should Surgeons Friend Their Patients on Facebook?
Throughout the history, surgeons not always were held in a high esteem. The first barbers-surgeons in medieval Europe had a terrible reputation. Their job included a wide range of procedures from cutting hair to pulling teeth and amputating limbs. Another favorite procedure was bloodletting, a very impressive event, quite terrifying for the people who watched. […]
Is a Novel about and by a Cardiac Surgeon Better than One Written by a Layman?
I’ve never liked reading fiction novels. Always thought it was a waste of time. I could learn much more from a good non-fiction book and quite often immediately apply the knowledge into my everyday life. Then I discovered John Grisham’s novels. They were not literary novels, but their plots were compelling, the action […]
