A not-so-shaggy dog story

In 1995, three days before I would graduate from residency, I received a letter from my departmental chairman informing me that the Department wasn’t entirely sure they would have the funds to keep me on as faculty. My chairman had counted on me getting the bulk of my salary from an NIH grant, a grant I never received. Yes, they had a Full Time Employment position rarin’ to go, but they were saving it for my classmate who would be off next year doing an oncology fellowship in New York. Yes, they really, really wanted me to stay on as faculty, but not enough to screw things up for my classmate.

Karen was five months pregnant with Jake and I was not amused. I did two things. I lost five pounds in three days and I began checking the classifieds in our professional journals.

Pickings were slim. Then as now, most programs wanted fellowship-trained residents, and I wasn’t about to spend another year or two in training. Remember, through the machinations of my Great Brain, I had managed to turn four years of med school into seven; I didn’t want to do the same with residency. Besides which, I had a family on the way. It was time to get a real job.

Ten years later than the rest of the medical world, folks in my field were just starting to get thrilled by molecular biology. Even if I hadn’t landed an NIH grant, my project (and my schooling) looked piping hot on paper. My ego, so recently bruised by my own department, was gratified by the warm letter I received from the chairman of a certain North Carolina otolaryngology program. They WANTED me.

The chairman (we’ll call him K) met me at the airport, took me back to his home, plied me with whiskey, and then talked money. The money wasn’t great, but it was better than I had back at USC, and the cost of living in North Carolina rawked over Los Angeles. And, as with any academic program, potential abounded for income supplementation through private practice. Drunk or not, I managed not to gag over K’s lowball offer.

That evening, I also learned what they intended for me. One of the top men in their department, we’ll call him J (and I’ll eventually explain the reasons for my coyness), wanted a partner. J was and is one of the nation’s top laryngologists. He has done more than anyone else in medicine to study the effects of acid reflux on the larynx, and we all have J to thank for popularizing the problem, too. He is truly a titan in our field.

I hadn’t met any titans before.

Reading between the lines, I gathered from the chairman that J had a forceful personality and it was anyone’s guess whether he would like me. (Whether I would like J never came up in my conversation with K.) And so I had some trepidation leading up to my interview the next morning with J.

This was no ordinary interview. This interview lasted the better part of two days. It began first thing in the morning, when J picked me up at my hotel, drove me in to the medical center, walked me to the department, and continued on until 10:30 that morning — a 2.5 hour session right there, and it was by no means over.

After an hour and a half of J’s nonstop exposition of the history of acid reflux (as it related to voice), a history which, rightfully, placed him front and center, a history wherein J used the memorable phrase a paradigm shift on top of a paradigm shift, I realized I would have to fight my way out of this quicksand in order to assert myself. Fight I did. To this day, I don’t know for sure what he thought about me, but I like to think I held my own and then some.

I had a few things going for me. As I mentioned, everyone back then was wowed by molecular biology. Not only that, but I had some goofy ideas about applying neural networks and fuzzy logic to the analysis of voice. (Maybe not so goofy — I still think those ideas are solid.) Thus, I had novel concepts to present, to J and to the rest of the department; and that afternoon, when I gave my canned talk about my dizzy mice and showed my video of mice swimming in circles, they were all duly awed.

I decided I liked J. Yes, he had an overwhelming personality. It strained me to be in his presence and not feel withered by the man’s gale-force mind. But it was an interesting challenge, too, and I suspected it would bring out the best in me if it didn’t drive me crazy first.

K was another story. I still felt betrayed by my own chairman, so I wanted to get all the financial details straight about this new appointment. No matter how I dissected it, I couldn’t understand where the money would come from and how it would add up. I ultimately decided against the North Carolina program due to my worries about K. But, back to J, the true subject of this not-so-shaggy dog story.

After I gave my talk to the department, J took me home to meet his family. He greeted his dog, his sons, and his wife, in that order. I remember being introduced to his Doberman, Gunner (short for Gundlach Bundschu), but I have no recollection of other introductions. Minutes later we were on our way again. He piled me into the back of his truck, Gunner into the shotgun seat, and we were on our way — for a walk in the local park.

We parked across the street. I’m not sure what happened next. Was the passenger-side window down, or did Gunner bound out into traffic when J opened the passenger-side door? I remember hearing the screech of breaks and J’s horrified shout. Outside, he knelt beside Gunner, doting on him, performing a physical exam that would make any vet school instructor proud. The driver of the other car had stopped, got out, and did what he could to assist, but J wouldn’t even look at him. The other man kept asking, Is he all right? Can I do anything to help? But J wouldn’t acknowledge his existence.

Gunner was fine, of course, and before long we were chasing after him. The other driver left, undoubtedly more rattled by the experience than Gunner.

***

In the months and years that followed, I heard occasional odd rumors about J: that he had been a bodybuilder; that he had been forced to choose between a Hanes Underwear modeling contract and continued employment as a prof at the U. That he emulated the Monty Python lumberjack. Strange stuff like that.

As many of you know, I chose the safer option — a post at University of San Antonio, one with a guaranteed salary, a brilliant chairman, great faculty, wonderful residents. I hated Texas but I loved that job. I often wondered, though, how my life would have been different in North Carolina. Probably would have had to give it up for my family (the heat, ultimately, did us all in), but perhaps I’d be a laryngologist today rather than a general practice ENT. Who knows?

And I also wondered what sorts of great works J and I might have done together. I don’t fancy myself a titan, but I am a good ideas man. With J goading me on, I might have turned some of those ideas into reality.

Even back in ’95-’96, the U had been nervous that J would leave (perhaps because of the Hanes Underwear scare?) Indeed, I doubt J wanted a partner; the Department wanted him to have a lieutenant, someone who could pick up his lucrative practice if J left the program. They did, in fact, find a guy for that role, and J did, in fact, leave the program.

And became a woman.

I guess we’ve all gone through a few changes in the last ten, twelve years, some of us more than most.

D.

PS: I’ve omitted names because I suspect J is the sort of person who googles herself on a regular basis. She might still find this post, but hopefully she’ll take it in the right spirit. It’s not often I meet titans, even less often that I meet transgender titans.

Doggy drawing from the Art Renewal Center Museum.