Month: November 2015

In a rush to eliminate cancer-caused pain, my surgeon begins the operation Nov 30th

Spinal stimulator

Spinal stimulator

Dear loved ones, family and friends:

I have an appointment at Columbia Medical Center in New York City. Dr. Christopher J. Winfree will conduct spinal surgery to insert a spinal stimulator. The stimulator has a good chance of dramatically reducing my crippling pain.

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  4. Thank you.

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Chris_Winfree-e1429044858419

Dr. Christopher J. Winfree

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Pain

Pain

  1. My elder daughter Joanna is pregnant, God willing, with my first grandchild.
  2. My younger daughter Amelia is marrying and I am scheduled to give away the bride.
  3. For three weeks in October I was in the hospital with an infection that nearly killed me.
  4. In the hospital I wrote a user’s guide for a sophisticated software.
  5. My pain level for the past year has averaged a daily 7 on a scale of 1-10.
  6. “If not now, when?”
  7. I am desperately short of funds.

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Spinal stimulatorMonday, November 30th, Dr. Winfree begins pre-surgical tests.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/46157493[/vimeo]

Spinal stimulator
Spinal stimulator

Friday, December 4th Dr. Winfree inserts an electric test probe in my spine. There is a good chance [50-50] the probe will dramatically reduce my pain.

Friday December 5th-18th, a period of testing.

[Fingers crossed] On Thursday, December 18th, Dr. Winfree inserts a spinal stimulator made by Medtronic, the same company that manufactured my pacemaker.

Spinal stimulator
Spinal stimulator

Sunday December 20th. After extensive physical therapy both before and after the procedure, I return to State College.

Consequently, I will be able to:

  • Manage my pain
  • Experience being a grandfather
  • Give away my younger daughter in marriage
  • Work considerably more productively [Work is a good.]

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I am doing this in a rush.

If not now, when?

Daughter Joanna with son-in-law Jade Phillips

JoannaJade

 

 

 

 

 

Daughter Amelia Altalena with fiancé Javier Blanco

Amelia Solkoff displays her engagement ring which Javier Blanco puts on her finger following (according to male chauvinist tradition) Javier request that I give him my daughter's hand in marriage. (Readers are requested to explain why it is her "hand " Javier requested rather than her left elbow or her right big toe.)

https://joelsolkoff.com/spinal-stimulator-campaign-song/

My mother’s Master’s Thesis: “Furthering Christian/Jewish Dialogue Through a Study of the Person Jesus

 

FurtheringCover

 

Furthering-Christian-Jewish-Dialogue

Telephony in China: 1984 eye-witness account

TheEconomist

China

My grandmother’s 1920’s wedding certificate

BubbiesWedding

Spinal Stimulator Campaign Song

https://youtu.be/jog8gh40Fho

 

 

 

 

 

Crusader Bible

Photograph courtesy Morgan Library & Museum, New York, New York
Photograph courtesy Morgan Library & Museum, New York, New York
Photograph courtesy Morgan Library & Museum, New York, New York
Saul Slaying Nahash and the Ammonites; Samuel Anoints Saul and Sacrifices to the Lord.Old Testament miniatures with Latin, Persian, and Judeo-Persian inscriptions,France, Paris, Purchased by J. P. Morgan, Jr.,1916

“Two cultures” motto Friday, November 6, 2015

Scientific American cover
Scientific American cover
Scientific American cover

“There have been plenty of days when I have spent the working hours with scientists and then gone off at night with some literary colleagues. I mean that literally. I have had, of course, intimate friends among both scientists and writers. It was through moving regularly from one to the other and back again that I got occupied with the problem of what, long before I put it on paper, I christened to myself as the ‘two cultures.'”

“For constantly I  felt I was moving among two groups–comparable in intelligence, identical in race, not grossly different in social origin, earning about the same incomes, who had almost ceased to communicate at all, who in intellectual, moral and psychological climate had so little in common that instead of going from Burlington House or South Kensington to Chelsea, one might have crossed an ocean.”

–C.P. Snow’s The Two Cultures Rede Lecture, 1959

[“Charles Percy Snow, Baron Snow,CBE (15 October 1905 – 1 July 1980) was an English physical chemist and novelist who also served in several important positions in the British Civil Service and briefly in the UK government. 

He is best known for his series of novels known collectively as Strangers and Brothers, and for The Two Cultures, a 1959 lecture in which he laments the gulf between scientists and ‘literary intellectuals'”.]