Scott D. McLean, MD

Ontology and cheeseburgers!

Last week we skied Crested Butte (Colorado) and Taos (New Mexico) on bluesky mornings and afternoons, almost spring temperatures, to the point that a few snowboarders at the top of Siver Queen Express opted to honor their bravado and pectorales majores by not wearing shirts. No, I doubt they bothered with sunscreen.

We sauntered south – Santa Fe galleries, UNM and Old Town in Albuquerque, green chili cheeseburgers at the Owl Bar and Café in San Antonio (NM). New Mexico road signs are rather philosophical. For example, when you dip into the arroyos on I-25, especially when your speed approaches 80 mph, be prepared for an ontologic challenge: “Gusty Winds May Exist.”

On our trip, this was verified. About 53.6 mph of gust, routinely at 90 degrees to our direction of travel.

Overnight at Ft. Bliss in El Paso (TX), then Prude Ranch and the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains. We came into Ft. Davis from the north, along cliffs and a narrow road with banked curves and switchbacks on grade, the famous Rt. 118.  At dusk, we drove up the southern slope of Mt. Locke to the Observatory for their evening “Star Party” – an educational program to see stars and constellations, planets and galaxies, with astronomers, telescopes, and dark skies on a moonless night.

On the way, seemingly well past sunset, the air glowed – the day’s windy dust well aloft, catching and holding the last light of a fine day.

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The road trip is done, and now I have months to distract myself with trying to understand what else I have done, the safety and comfort I have abandoned by retiring from a profession I thought I had mastered. Even though a month is short, especially in a cosmic frame of mind, has this been the incipient phase of forgetting? Have I committed to losing my edge? Of course. Some. And what are these feelings that now visit, rather uninvited and impolite? Hah. Remorse, with a side order of guilt.

Dang it. I’m sleeping in tomorrow.

The cosmos comes to the rescue, as always. Today I had a text message from an old friend in India who asked me to look at photos of a young child, a dysmorphologist’s wheelhouse. And another friend sent a message that a child I saw decades ago, now a man, has finally been diagnosed, thanks to persistence and next-generation sequencing, and would I like to talk about that? Yah. Sure!

But the emotional and experiential end of clinical work is here.

In the dining room we have a centerpiece fashioned after a family tree, a special feature of my retirement party last December. The centerpiece had three balloons tethered to the branches by ribbons. Each balloon was a gold mylar star. One had lost buoyancy and floated meekly at chest level. I stabbed it with a carving knife and tossed the remnant in the trash, next to the coffee grounds. The other two starry balloons were not in their prime but serviceable. I took them onto the back porch in calm air and let them go into the night … not slow, not fast.

Metaphors range through the universe and will find you, but you have to keep your eyes open. And your heart.