Synchronicity

On Monday, 2013-09-16, while engaging in small talk with James in Medical Walk-In, the topic of earwax came up.  While removing earwax is one of the few ways in which I make a concrete difference in clinic, I was not sure that it was actually the right thing to do.  After all, earwax probably is there for a reason, and removing it may do more harm than good.

I wondered if animals have earwax and if they are better off with it.  I wondered if whales have earwax.

Soon after,  James noted that the New Scientist had an article on whale earwax that very day!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24206-whales-record-major-life-events-in-their-earwax.html#.UqQ20Y14mHk


Recently, I have had to visit North Shore and Rusk.  When I studied at NYU, I rotated through North Shore, and Rusk was attached to the main campus.

After Hurricane Sandy, Rusk moved to the Hospital of Joint Diseases at 17th Street and 2nd Avenue, just 2 streets away from the old Stuyvesant High School, giving me a chance to visit the old school for perhaps the first time in 20 years.

Before my last visit to Rusk, I thought it might be fun to meet some old friends near the old school and sent an email in the afternoon on 2013-12-03.  That night, Vanessa called me to ask for a contribution to an endowment for Stuyvesant.  The next evening, I met up with four old friends and took a picture in front of the old school.

I told my friends that my father was ill nearby, but I was not looking for sympathy.  Of the four old friends, one lost a mother and one lost a father about 20 years ago.  One's parents were divorced even longer than that.  Only one friend still had an intact family as far as I knew.

Andy informed (or reminded) me that Angela (with the same last name as Vanessa) from NYU a class after ours, was a Rehabilitation Medicine physician at Rusk.  Too bad for the sake of synchronicity and irony that she was not the attending physician taking care of my father.