Why the Poles Fight, part 3
They were young, desperate, and had seen enough of German savagery. They wanted to be free and wanted to avenge the unspeakable brutality of the invaders. They knew they could die, but also knew there are worse things than death. But the youths of Warsaw weren’t the only players in this crucial moment of the […]
Why the Poles Fight, part 2.
The Museum of Warsaw Uprising is chilling evidence of the atrocity of dying Nazi experiment. Being beaten on both fronts, the Germans unloaded their rage on the essentially defenseless population of the Polish capital. Their destruction of Warsaw was symbolic and reminds me of the epic razing of Carthage by the Romans after the Third […]
Why the Poles Fight
“Why in the world did you fight the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising?” A good friend of mine shook his head. There was more than a question in his demeanor. I sensed a tone of disapproval. “Were you out of your mind?” He was Hungarian and left his native country during the 1956 upheaval. The […]
A Full Spectrum of Surgeons: from Brainiac to Doer
In my last three posts, I wrote about the two gods in American surgery. Cooley and DeBakey. Two personalities who achieved the pinnacle, still being on the opposite ends of the surgical universe. One was a thinker, a planner, and had vision. The other one was, let’s-operate-and-see-what-happens, man. The Brainiac hired the Doer, and it […]
DeBakey vs Cooley, The Strife of Gods on Olympus
Ostensibly, it was all about the first implantation of an artificial heart. Argentinian surgeon, Domingo Liotta, started to work on the project at the University of Córdoba. And he was not even the first one in the history of medicine. Liotta, after his initial studies were published, was asked by DeBakey to continue his work […]
Michael DeBakey, the Surgeon who Saved His Own Life.
Putting together a puzzle of life, if you start with a piece of an enormous drive to excellence, add a piece of self-discipline, follow it with another piece of resilience, interpose these with a part of impeccable work habits, find a piece of attention to details and intolerance of error, border them with many pieces […]
Denton A. Cooley, Bigger than Texas
Modify, simplify, apply Denton A. Cooley, motto of The Texas Heart Institute. A story had circulated about Denton Cooley, the famous Houston-based surgeon and innovator, an exceptionally gifted man. While testifying in court, Dr. Cooley was asked by the opposing attorney if he considered himself to be the best heart surgeon in the world. “Yes, […]
How We Care. The Epilogue.
The family care doesn’t start at birth. And doesn’t finish at death. Arthur Kleinman, from memory, modified. At a certain age, each of us suddenly finds out we had ancestors. I got interested in my heritage when I realized that the name of the village, where my father was born, is the same as our […]
How We Care. My Mother.
“A mother is only as happy as her unhappiest child.” Nicole Helget, Stillwater When the Warsaw Uprising broke out, I was 6 months old. We lived in the center of the city, where the fighting was most brutal. One day, the group of insurgents brought us two infants whose mothers were killed by the Germans. […]
