Oy Vey It's A Personal Reflection
In memory of Henry P Kaplan, MD, JD, on his birthday.
Throughout my science courses in college, I always wished I could discuss what I was learning with Papa, my paternal grandfather. He was a big influence on my plans to study, at the time, medicine and ultimately something in the sciences. I was always so fascinated by the mechanisms in which biological processes work and as I got older, my fascination expanded to how our society and systems interact with those mechanisms.
I remember especially wishing I could pick up the phone, to interrupt him from his emails or playing solitaire as he sat at the desk in his office, when I took a course on the history of anatomy. It was a small class and we were able to look through original drawings and texts of anatomy and medical books that were centuries old. Flipping through those pages reminded me of sitting on the treadmill in the workout room where his medical textbooks were stored, thumbing through his well worn Gray’s Anatomy. I felt this wish even more deeply as I sat in a biomedical ethics course, knowing his feedback on my term papers and required readings would have been more valuable than any comments provided by a professor I can’t even remember.
When I was a junior and decided to ditch pre-med, I felt so lost. The only thing I had been able to imagine about getting older was to get into medical school and become a doctor. Diverging from that path was the right choice for me, but it took years to accept that I was not going to be the next Dr. Kaplan. Finding my passion in nutrition and food systems research was a new path, one I never got to discuss with Papa. I have been and always will be endlessly curious what he would have thought about the direction my life has taken. Not necessarily because I am seeking approval but because I so valued his perspectives and encouragement to explore and learn. Getting accepted to and deciding to attend Tufts, and subsequently moving to Boston, sparked a new connection between his professional, academic life and mine. Though I know from talking with my Grandma, how different our Bostons were.
It took me a while to realize that while I am not the next Dr. Kaplan, I did become the next family member to take up blogging as a hobby. A blogger whose opinions (critiques) also focus on the tangled webs of politics and industry that lay behind the health, food, and nutrition news I’m constantly immersed in.
I often wonder how much of the Papa I remember, the one whose voice comes across my mind as I’m doing my own research and writing, is genuine- rather than one I’ve built up over the years of missing him and trying to hold on to as many memories as I can. His own work preserves so much of his self, each post an accumulation of his professional knowledge, politics, humor, and life experiences. He even documented some of his time as a patient going through treatment for the melanoma, which eventually took his life. Though his writing, much like his persona in real life, never deviated from the perspective of an accomplished doctor, medical lawyer, and genuinely ethical, caring man.
Today, in finding his blog and reading through posts for the past couple of hours, more connections bloomed. I see so much of my writing style and frustrations in his work. We both write about the need for top-down accountability rather than change on an individual level, without disregarding the impact a person’s actions do have. We share a loathing of corruption and greed and discuss the evils of science that disregards humanity. His commentary and wisdom about the United States health care system, unfortunately, will likely remain timeless.
His blog’s title and description are as follows:
Our Health System by Henry P. Kaplan
“Our enormous, complex, confusing and expensive health system impacts every American's life. Does it help us or hurt us? Who makes the decisions which determine whether we live or die because of the care we receive? Who profits from those decisions? This blog's purpose to to help you understand and critically analyze our healthcare system. The more we know, the more we can demand and get improvement.”
His About Me reads:
With degrees in economics (A.B., William and Mary), law (J.D.,Harvard), and medicine (M.D..summa, State Un. of NY - Downstate). I have been a fellow of the Health Research Council of the City of New York studying union health programs and a U.S. Public Health Service Fellow in Hematology at Stanford University Medical School. I have taught at Tufts University, CCNY and Stanford Medical School (Assoc. Clinical Prof.). I have been Chief of Staff/board member of San Jose Hospital and Health Dimensions Health System and practiced internal medicine/hematology as well as health law (now retired from law practice). I have been a board member of the National Health Lawyers Association, the California Hospital Association, the San Jose Medical Group, the Northern California Red Cross Blood Services, the Wilson's Disease Association and the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Center. I am now on a hospital medical staff biomedical ethics committee. This blog accepts no financial support.
The more I learn, write, grow, and explore my own existential curiosities the more desperate my wish becomes to sit across from him at the round table in my grandparents’ Saratoga kitchen, surrounded by the, um, lovely wallpaper that was likely much older than I, and a fridge covered in family photos. A wish for one more conversation. One more conversation where he could see me as I am, now; a published academic with a Master’s degree from a university whose campus we shared as a teacher and student only decades apart, a writer, a joyful cook who graciously accepts that my morning oatmeal will never taste as good as his, his oldest grandchild returned from Boston to find home in the Bay. One more conversation where I would tell him how proud I am to be this person and let him know that even without his physical presence, memories of him will always bring me guidance and comfort.
Reading his words today feels like a celebration and a bridge between the Papa of my memory and the one captured in hundreds of blog posts over four years. If you would like to join me in this celebration, here is a link to Our Health System.
Today, I started with his first post, “Quality” health care published January 30th, 2008, and have a few additional recommendations below. Most of them are fairly brief, especially compared to my own posts, yet powerful.
Who Is Responsible for Patient Health Decisions? - June 10th, 2008
Parallels: Big Steel and the Hospital Industry - April 9th, 2008
Playing Both Ends Against The Middle - April 6th, 2011
HOW DO LIONS CHOOSE DINNER? - January 13th, 2012
A WISH BEFORE SURGERY - November 8th, 2011
A final closing thought from Henry P. Kaplan, shared in one of his last blog posts written from the depths of his melanoma, “QUERY: Are you wearing a hat outdoors and applying sufficient sunscreen?”
Happy birthday, Papa.
This was beautifully written and it's so awesome that you found parallels between your work and his :)
Such a beautiful tribute to an incredible man. ❤️