by Pat Wetzel | Feb 13, 2017 | YOLO
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
New Haven, CT 1981-1987
If I could put my finger on a time when things were good, it would have been the days in Connecticut, at Yale, when we were young and all powerful, out untested futures unlimited in our limited egocentric minds. The path was straight and clear. The arrogance of youth is such great, self absorbing fun.
Fun may not be quite the word one associates with a surgical residency, but coastal Connecticut was probably about as good as it gets. Yale-New Haven Hospital is an inner city hospital, with its share of gunshot wounds and drugs, but it’ s not quite as brutal as say Bellevue in New York or Charity in New Orleans. Enough gore to learn surgical technique, without your patients being a constant threat to your life. Except for AIDS. That threat was a continual apparition never far from mind.
We lived in a rented condominium near the water. (Michael told people we owned it; we didn’t) Our deck faced a marsh which swayed with the seasons, harboring wildlife and served as a passage for their migrations. The view off land’s edge was simply spectacular.
Just down the coast the Yale Yacht Club ( a misnomer if ever there was one–it was a somewhat run down seaside structure where sailboats are available on a first come, first served basis) sends its regattas off into the water. It was inexpensive sailing, and if you didn’t mind the wait, it was a great way to play on the water.
Our friends in New Haven formed an interesting circle. Authors, academics, students, Chinese exchange students and my favorite neighbor, Eva. Eva was a big girl-over two hundred pounds-and a bit on the garish side. But lovable and fun beyond reason. We were exact opposites and we soon became fast friends. I have one picture of the two of us in Newport. It was a beautiful clear Saturday morning and we’d driven up to see the mansions. I was rather blasé about the whole trip, but Eva, who had grown up in Czechoslovakia, left in 1967 and emigrated to Canada was life’s perpetual tourist and I had to honor her enthusiasms. There is a picture of us- it is a study in contrasts and I love it dearly. I am standing oh-so-preppy-proper in my boots, herringbone skirt, turtle neck and tweed blazer. Eva is towering over me in stretch lycra, leather and hair. We both smiled for the camera under blue skies. I will always remember that picture when I think of sunny Connecticut days.
Overall, New Haven life seemed to agree with us both. Connecticut was a wonderful combination of people, places and events. I think of those days as eclectic, but proper, preppy protected days. Evenings at Griswold Inn in Essex, munching popcorn and ordering carpetbaggers (filet mignons, grilled, split then stuffed with deep fried oysters). For New Year’s there was champagne along the Connecticut River with Chip and his girlfriend du jour; island parties for the fourth of July; boating and squash; football games and tailgate parties; and a wonderfully isolated world of privileged young adulthood. If only those days could have continued. But all things end, and with the completion of Michael’s residency, people dashed off in different directions to start fellowships. Having selected the locale exotique of the class, everyone promised to visit in New Orleans.
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by Pat Wetzel | Feb 11, 2017 | YOLO
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
New Orleans 1988
At the start of the year, Michael held onto his acquired aura of Yankee stoicism, a bulwark against this sensuous town. Years of WASP repression had sent his instincts for pleasure deep into hiding, and the New England spareness of his school days provided him cover. Here in New Orleans, he held onto these props of security.
Narcotic prescriptions were doled out only reluctantly. “Drug addicts,” he judged his patients’ pain without care.
“Just give them what they need,” Monsieur le Doctor told him.
Nights on call became a battle of wits and will, with Michael’s patients pitted against his prescriptive reticence, trying to crack his power over their pain. And somewhere amidst the eternal heat of the summer, the endless stream of sick and unhappy patients, and the constant strain of studying for the upcoming boards, Michael changed his mind, and prescriptions for narcotics started to flow easily.
The ring of the phone became an inconvenience to be dealt with, a pill to be administered. But slowly, anger seeped into the equation. Anger at the phone, the patients, at everything and at nothing. At times it became frightening to be around Michael and his emerging anger, always hidden but never far from the calm ivy league surface of Monsieur Henri’s star pupil.
The year unfolded. My classes were wonderful. In terms of architecture, I learned about Louisiana from the 
perspective of her buildings. I studied suburban and urban buildings; townhouses in the quarter and plantations in the country. The garden district houses and uptown showcases. By Christmas, I could walk through any part of town and rattle off the buildings, the ornamentation the architects and the dates.
My other class was American cartography, but it was really about how Louisiana determined the geographic exploration and evolution of the U.S. Every facet of American cartography was examined from the perspective of the Gulf of Mexico. New England, that tiny collection of states on the morning weather map, barely warranted a mention. It was a most interesting perspective.
My eye was constantly on the map. Old maps in class, tv maps in the morning, maps of the future in my mind. Where to next? Anyplace north was my vote. Back to New Haven. Boston. Chicago. San Francisco.
***
The parades of Mardi Gras are at once magnificent and home made.
“Mister, Mister!” goes the call of the crowd as the floats pass by. Beads are tossed and caught.
The weeks leading up to Lent are full of parades, king cakes, celebrations and preparations, big and small. After a day of
slicing flesh and repairing spines, Henri would take us out for dinner at a restaurant along the parade route. Courses were ordered to accommodate the progression of the parade. So there might be oysters followed by bead throwing; a main course with a go cup for the wine; more beads; a cheese course; more beads and desert. Followed by brandy and cigars (for the gentlemen) amidst our catch of beads for the evening.
In addition were the endless parties that just seemed to keep coming. Friday nights out on the town were de rigeur throughout the year, as was the constant stream of food and drink.
And the food! I grew up in a food oriented family. Our multi-month European travel safaris were marked by the restauants we visited. Now in New Orleans, I viewed the town by the food it offered. From simple burgers at Port O’ Call; cajun popcorn at the bar on the corner; spinach salad with fried oysters at Maison de Ville; and the piece de resistance, the bread pudding souflee with bourbon creme anglaise at Commander’s Palace.
All the food in New Orleans was good. The warm searing spices locked your attention to the matter at hand, the plate before you, and temporarily refocused your attention from the sweltering heat. How is it in such a hot climate, heavy, spicy dishes prevail? The dark roux that binds the gumbos; red beans cooked slowly on Mondays, the historic wash days, served with streaming starchy rice; jambalaya; étouffée. The list goes on.
On a balcony overlook Royal Street, we sat pondering this Friday’s meal. From our second story perch I watched the
crowd. They laugh, go cups in hand, as they weave through the streets.
I turned my attention back to the menu and ordered Shrimp Remoulade, follow by blackened prime rib. Michael ordered his usual stew of steaming gumbo. I sipped my wine, Michael his scotch. It was a pleasant night, the stars twinkled above and our future was ahead of us.
“I have an offer to go back to Yale,” Michael informed me.
New Haven. Connecticut. YES!
“What do you think?” I asked diplomatically.
“I don’t know if I want to go back where I trained.” Michael brought his glass to his lips. The ice, his concession to the heat, jingled as he raised the glass. Never join a club that wants you was one of his key operating rules, but this was a club worth joining.
“I’d think about it. I miss New England,” I slowly built my case for anything north. “But I can understand how you fell about going back to Yale. Whatever happened to the offers from the private groups?” Private practice would pay considerably more than academic medicine and having seen the abusive hierarchy and byzantine power struggles of academia, the prosperous bliss of private practice seemed like the route of choice to me.
“Shrimp remoulade?” the waiter inquired.
“For the lady.” Always the gentleman, Michael.
“How is school?” Michael changed the subject as I submerged myself in the tangy, spicy cool shrimp on a warm night in New Orleans.
“Wonderful,” I replied in combination to his query and my food. And for that moment, I let the topic of the future drop.
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by Pat Wetzel | Feb 11, 2017 | YOLO
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
New Orleans 1988
Morning, the sun streamed over the peeling ad for Dixie beer on the wall of the next door warehouse. I poured rich, hot, bitter chicory coffee for breakfast. I had found a marvelous Swiss patisserie uptown which baked the world’s richest, most decent brioche. These cakes become my standard morning fare as I watched the TV report on the steamy Gulf weather. New England looked so small and far away.
The year in New Orleans was a year in limbo. I took some classes at Tulane (architecture and cartography); Michael learned spinal surgery; and part of the year we traveled, looking at “real jobs” for my soon to be board certified husband.
Michael was offered some wonderful oportunties. To go back to Yale (my choice!), Harvard. Positions in Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York. We seemed to spend every spare moment agonizing over what would be the best choice
In between, weekends became an attempt to escape from the heat and whatever else bore down upon one’s mind. And we both had a great deal on our minds. I cannot speak for Michael, but I was concerned about this year in limbo. I was concerned about my own future, about starting a family, about a new place, a new job. It was an uneasy place to be, and I felt as if I were being swept away by forces and decisions beyond my scope of influence. I steadied myself with the day to day minutia of life in this incredible town.
And I found great delight in simple pleasures. The architecture. Dining out. Music. The pleasure of learning again. A
cup of cafe au lait on Jackson Square. Michael however found no such simply joys. His weekends soon devolved into a pitcher of Manhattans, a bag of Zapp’s potato chips and a stack of videos. Senseless violence videos of commandos and gunfire and visions of sexual brutality. Day after day, weekend after weekend. I tuned out at this side, reading or buried myself in the difficult task of resurrecting long dormant academic skills of my own.
Over the course of several months, Michael grew increasingly distant and incommunicative. He hated his patients, he hated the hospital staff, at times I think he hated me. He would couch his remarks in daggers, then withdraw into silence. This bright, talented man had somewhere decided upon a path of darkness, and here he resided in the recesses of his mind, his pitcher of Manhattans at his side. I do not know what sent him to these inaccessible places which begged for such relief, but he started becoming depressed and angry with greater and greater frequency. The pressure of the upcoming boards was considerable and I think fantasies of failure and grandeur drove him in circles in his mind. It was clearly a circle of destruction and I finally revolted one fine Saturday. I poured his Manhattans into a pitcher and drove uptown where I deposited him and his pitcher on a bench in Audubon park with the Sunday papers for amusement. He sulked, alternately lashing out at me, then demanding the attention I withdrew.
I walked.
I walk through the park. I walked to the University and I did not come back for hours. This descent into surly weekend oblivion was becoming too much. I thought back and if I were honest with myself, I would have admitted that some erratic behavior had surfaced before, although not to this degree of intensity.
Michael was a wonderful raconteur and mimic, and his tales delighted everyone. Years later I found out they were all false. He would boast about sports he never played; cars and racetracks he never drove; and a boarding school he never attended. But at the time, he pulled everyone in, and we all believed.
This year, in New Orleans, he is vaguely macabre and totally self absorbed. He is absorbed in his drink, in the darkest recesses of his mind, yet he demands that his every dark and perverse whim be the center of attention. He pulls the life out of those around him when he is like this.
And then, in a brighter moment, he is all shine and energy, witty and engaging, the perfect handsome Harvard man. But that is a facade, an energy shield. He uses his energy to lure people in like lightening bugs into a jar, and then he slams on the lid, leaving no opening for air, and one by one, the sparkling lights with all their energy and beauty, dim and die.
It was the heat. It was New Orleans, I reassure myself. Alone in this strange town tucked behind levees and hidden from the river to which it owes is very soul, characterized by its culinary and personal excesses, with no one to talk to or confide in, and with Henry as the standard bearer singing into the night, I saw no outlet but a naive hope for some better future.
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by Pat Wetzel | Feb 11, 2017 | YOLO
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
Flying a sailplane demands all my concentration. It is like anything I have done before. Vague and invisible forces of risking and sinking air form this world and I must find the rising air if I am to stay aloft. Where is it? Which way should I go?
Where before things had been real and tangible, here things are vague and invisible. Currents and suggestions abound, but there is little physical evidence to follow. How do I know that there will be lift under that cloud? How do I know where to look under it? Why do I rise in the air for no apparent reason? Why do I encounter sinking air? I do not yet understand any of this.
If I choose properly, I will have a good flight. If I do not, I will spend the day scrapping for lift and I’ll never go anywhere.
I have dropped into another world and I do not yet understand its ways. They are foreign. I fly though areas of blue sky, blue holes, where there should be no lift, only to find myself in an avenue of rising air that seems to extend as far as I fly.
Yet not two steps to my left, the air is sinking, fast, down towards the earth. If I make the mistake of drifting off into that air, I will lose a great deal of altitude. It could terminate my flight. In a field or s0me other place I don’t want to be. Just two steps over.
When I first started flying, there were rules. You enter the pattern at this altitude. Never lower. You have to have a field picked out at this altitude. You do not stray. Things have a definite progression.
At some point, judgement starts coming into the equation. Former guidelines are reconsidered, challenged. Now I enter my pattern a bit lower. At one thousand feet, I still look for lift, not yet committing to a landout. I readjust the rules, but sometimes I get bitten by this. Some rules are good rules. I need to mind them. I am not greater than the forces around me. Whenever I dare to think that I am, my arrogance comes back to haunt me.
Conscious and unconscious rules. In my heart I know when I have strayed too far. When I feel those first tugs of uncertainty, it is time for me to temper my will and look at the sky around me. I must fly with it, not in spite of it.
I have that sense that things are amiss. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I think I need to concentrate on perceiving lift.
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by Pat Wetzel | Feb 11, 2017 | YOLO
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
Pennsylvania 1988
Moving from the decadent abandon of New Orleans and Mardi Gras to this germanic mid-Atlantic culture where Fat 
Tuesday was Fasnacht Day was an unbearable contrast for my gastronomic soul. Fasnachts are donut holes. On Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras, the day in which all of New Orleans rocks and rolls, eats and drinks and parties until the sun rises, the Pennsylvania Dutch consume donut holes.
Hershey is a relatively small town outside of Harrisburg, in the central Pennsylvania countryside. It’s main claim to fame is the chocolate company. Milton S. Hershey’s legacy lives throughout the town, with the Hershey Chocolate company and Hershey Park historically providing employment for the area. That and the medical center. Milton S. Hersey gave $50 million dollars to the state university to start a medical school, with the stipulation that it be built in this town.
In the rarified world of Ivy League academic parlance, Hershey Med Center is not quite top drawer. Those distinctions are awarded among themselves, to the Hopkins and Harvards of the world. But it was growing, forming a new center for spine surgery, and for Michael it offered an opportunity. Or at least, that was his perception.
When I think about moving to Pennsylvania, I always remember a sign along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Harrisburg 97 miles, it reads. I recall a total sense of isolation and panic. What would I do here? Loyal spouse, I disregarded my concerns and concerned myself with packing and moving halfway across the country and into the country.
Central Pennsylvania is a curious place. It is extremely conservative, almost out of the fifties. As I started looking for work, I encountered attitudes which were well beyond my experience. I had one potential employer say that he wanted to meet my husband, and another ask why I wanted to work at all. I did not fit in.
Conformity was valued here, and this tendency showed itself in peculiar ways. One was the uniform consensus that this was such a perfect place. Quiet, peaceful, predictable.
“This is a great place to raise a family,” I was told again and again. This chant took on an eerie quality, repeated as if it was a mantra, providing a buffer from any other possible perception. I was unable to connect with the seemingly mono-dimensional perspective of a world I did not belong to. Lives were bounded and well defined. In medical circles, wives were marked by the status of their husbands. I missed New Haven and the eclectic, energetic academic environment of a major university and I longed for the waters of the Sound, the music of the buoy, and the cool seaside breezes of summer.
I should have put my foot down about going to central Pennsylvania. There was something eerily incongruent about the area. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that bothered me, but something was not right.
But instead, I deferred to my husband. It was his first job after his medical training had finally finished and I wanted him have the freedom to do what he wanted. Besides, I could hardly force him go back to Connecticut or to give the west coast a try. So I was along for the ride.
***
It was a Friday evening and I planned a leisurely dinner for the two of us that evening. In New Haven we used to share leisurely dinners, talking until all hours. I decided to throw some steaks on the grill for dinner in an attempt to dredge up the pleasant past.
For the first time in nearly three years, we were finally getting unpacked in a new house, in a new town.
“Isn’t dinner ready yet?” he inquired.
“In a minute. How do you want your steak?”
“Goddamn it.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s dog hair on my pants.”
“We do have a dog.” The bassett hound howled in agreement.
He ignored both of us and topped off his drink.
“Aren’t you on call tonight?”
“Only spine call.”
I looked at him. Only spine call. If any spine trauma came into the emergency room tonight, Michael was the surgeon responsible.
He avoided my gaze.
“Here,” I gestured him into the dining room with a plate of food. “You look beat. You know what we should do? We should go on a trip. When was the last time we took a vacation?” I asked, joining him at the table.
“Life is not a vacation,” he admonished in his new found assistant professor’s tone.
“I know that. I just want to take one with you. We live in the same house and never see each other. I think we need to spend some time together. Remember how much fun we used to have in Maine?”
He ignored me.
“St. Maarten?” The days at Yale, remember those? I silently inquired.
“We haven’t had a vacation in five years. Five years! You look terrible and you have no life outside the hospital!”
“There’s nothing wrong with my life.”
“What life? All you do is work. You are totally stressed out. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. If it’s not getting to you, it sure is getting to me.”
“There is no stress. I like my work.”
I looked at him hard across the dinner table.
“You do nothing but complain. You hate your peers, you hate your patients and you are chronically unhappy. You hate the call schedule; you hate the new Dean. You blow up over nothing. You have dropped all your outside interests and friends and you refuse to take a simple vacation. You’re drawn, you’re grey and you drink too much.”
Michael was silent. Rock still. I had intruded on sacred ground, but I couldn’t stop now.
“Look at you. You’re on call tonight and you’re on your third drink.”
He glared at me.
“Michael, get out of that hospital. Go away alone if you have to. Stop drinking. Get some perspective, get some help. Your job doesn’t love you. Your patients don’t love you. Your staff doesn’t care about you. But I do and I cannot seem to reach you. I am really worried about you. I see a man who I love dearly, falling steadily apart. You’re miserable, stressed out and working yourself to death, for what? For your boss? For a title? For money? All the money in the world isn’t worth this. If you died tomorrow, would you wish you’d spent another day at the hospital?”
Silence. Deafening silence.
Michael rest his fork on is plate. He looks dark and unwell.
“Michael, what is wrong?”
Dark circles hang low under his eyes. Tears seemed to form, then hatred. “I never loved you. I am in love with my nurse. She loves me. She needs me..”
The sound of the beeper. Michael reaches quickly for it, leaving his words hanging in the air.
Emergency room. Auto accident on the way, spine trauma and Michael is on call. He quickly downs the remainder of his drink and without another word, leaves. I hear the garage door open and close, as he disappears in his new Mercedes.
I sit, stunned, in the silence left behind.
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by Pat Wetzel | Feb 11, 2017 | YOLO
When the going gets tough, the tough go traveling!
An excerpt from Adventures By Sailplane
B.S. (By Sailplane) B.C. (Before Cancer)
It was a tight thermal, swirling rapidly upwards. I banked the glider hard to the left. The large metal sailplane banked and seated itself in the rising air.
The altimeter indicates climb, but I can not sense it in this heavy plane.
“Stick back,” my instructor advises. Back pressure, back pressure and rudder to keep the plane turning tightly to climb in a narrow thermal. I hold the plane and we gain altitude. The thermal is small and it takes all my effort to try to center the plane in the rising air. Slow, keep the plane slow, because we climb ever so much better just above stall speed. It is an art, flying a sailplane, and I am absorbed in practicing my craft.
And then, without notice, I am looking over my toes at the earth rotating around and around. My straps press into my shoulders and I hang from the mounts. One rotation. Two. Another. Green earth beneath my feet. The sight is mesmerizing, pulling me down with it. The altimeter spins down.
I am stunned; I truly don’t know what happened. I instinctively neutralize the stick and push it forward, kick rudder and regain airspeed. The plane rights itself. In the thermal, the combination of too much opposite stick and rudder had produced a cross control spin.
I have lost a great deal of altitude.
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