I’m a writer, a retired pediatrician, a husband of nearly 40 years, a father of two grown children, and, since 2020, a person with Parkinson’s (PwP). My symptoms started well before I was diagnosed, though, meaning that for years and perhaps decades I was a Person Who Didn’t Know He Had Parkinson’s (PwdkhhP)… like most of us later-onset PwPs, I imagine.
I wanted to be a teacher before I became a pediatrician. Looking back, I see that that’s what I became after all—pediatrics is all about teaching. It’s about breaking down sometimes complex medical and scientific concepts into simple, comprehensible explanations…and then pitching those explanations to everyone from inquisitive kindergartners to frightened parents of tiny premature infants.
I got pretty good at it, and it’s in that spirit of demystifying often-complex Parkinson’s concepts—everything from the basic science of the disease, to epidemiology, genetics, treatment, and more—that I’ll approach this blog.
And I’ll warn potential readers–I’m prone to going down rabbit holes I find interesting. That’s how I learned, while writing my book Birth Day, that the first successful cesarean section was performed by a 19th-century woman masquerading as a male British Army surgeon, and that not all of Henry VIII’s wives got their heads chopped off. (Two of them died of childbirth complications.) Hopefully, you’ll enjoy my sometimes random digressions.
Personal Fun Fact:
I’m not McSteamy. I’m not Dick Van Dyke, either.
Biggest writing accomplishment:
My book, Birth Day: A Pediatrician Explores the Science, the History, and the Wonder of Childbirth, was published in early 2009 by Ballantine Books. It’s partly a memoir (I dragged many a family member into my story), partly an exploration of how humans came to give birth in the strange way that we do, and partly about the historical events that have shaped, and been shaped by, the birth of a child. There’s a lot of humor mixed in, too. Birth Day got great reviews—from the Washington Post, The Journal of Midwifery and Women’s Health, the New England Journal of Medicine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and many other publications. Birth Day was a Northern California Book Awards finalist, and was named a “Top 10 Science Book of 2010” by the Japan Financial Times. (Yes, there’s a Japanese edition. And no, I can’t read it.)
Biggest sports accomplishment:
I was once ranked in the top 50 in the world in that most glamorous of sporting events, the shot put. Granted, this was an age-group thing (I was 60, a relative youngster among my fellow 60-64-year-old competitors), I finished exactly 50th (right between beefy, middle-aged guys from Ireland and Latvia),and there were only about 150 men my age in the world that year still tossing around cannonballs for fun. Which, if you were grading my performance, means I’d get a B-minus or so. Still, I can truthfully say that I once ranked in the top 50 worldwide in something. I’ll probably have that carved on my tombstone.
More about the arcane world of senior shot-putting later…
Biggest pediatric accomplishment:
I loved the continuity that came with practicing pediatrics in one place for a long time. By the time I retired I was taking care of my “grandpatients”—the children of my grown-up patients, some of whom I’d known since they themselves were in the womb. It was a privilege to be a part of so many lives over so many years, both in sickness and in health.
Oh, and I never dropped any kids on their heads. (I’ll probably have that carved on my tombstone, too.)
A Moving Disorder 