My husband is the Man of Hobbies.
Some years he takes up beer-making. Some years he decides to dedicate himself to the perfect homemade sausage. During med school and training he did a great deal of hand-piecing and quilting. He used to repair key-wound toys. A few years ago he wrote a novel to see what that was like (I think it's lying around somewhere, almost finished.) Among other pursuits, he cooks, bakes, volunteers as a neuromuscular neurologist in Viet Nam, goes fishing, leads a Boy Scout troop (just back from clambering up Mt. Katahdin in Maine and headed for the Grand Canyon some time next year), teaches a confirmation class, and was recently a Senior Warden at Christ Church (where James Fenimore Cooper was once Senior Warden), travels whenever he gets the chance (lately: Cambodia, Thailand, Sweden, Yukon, Morocco, Egypt, Greece, Turkey), and hunts.
Right now he is hunting in Mozambique, accompanied by our friend Jack, who is packing a camera. Yesterday Michael killed a Cape Buffalo, and I am wondering what on earth one does with a powerful and short-tempered but dead Cape Buffalo, and also thinking about the mischief and fun there could be in becoming a vegetarian... Thanks to a certain person's hobbies, I have eaten antelope (spicy, as if it had been eating mesquite, maybe), caribou, mule deer, white tail, and innumerable other four-legged and two-winged creatures.
Michael and I have been married for 25 years. We eloped and had a sheriff's deputy for a bridesmaid. He was packing a gun but didn't mind holding the bouquet, my one symbol of the usual way of doing things. Flowers and a gun: it seems like a key to how things have gone... I never would have guessed that Mike would sew as well as cook (I knew he could cook), or that he would crave traveling to places like the Crazy Mountains and the Yukon and Mozambique to hunt.
More than most lives, his is an adventure. I do hope he is not eaten by lions.
Showing posts with label Michael Miller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Miller. Show all posts
Friday, September 07, 2012
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Burrowing
Evidently tomorrow UPS will bring the "second pass" for A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage (Mercer University Press, March 2012) to my doorstep. And that means I will need to start reading it again (again). So this afternoon I shall be holing up to finish looking back over the manuscript of The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press, tba), as I need to get the absolutely final version turned in... except when I am feeding child no. 3 (weedily growing and hungry) or admonishing cats and dog for waking me at six when I told the wisp-brained things so very clearly about the concept of Daylight Savings Time and how they should not wake me with their absurd bio-rhythms.
Good news: the slightly-missing husband surfaced in Casablanca. Trala, I am content. Happy, even. He'd better not have as many adventures as he had when volunteering in Vietnam! Humming an ethereal Hopson tune that goes with a medieval poem, "There is no rose of such virtue." Resmiranda!
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Happy Father's Day, Michael!
ON CALL FOR CARE IN VIETNAM
Back to basics for Bassett neurologist in Southeast Asia
--Trang Ho, special correspondent
Source: Columbia Magazine March 2011
and the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons website.
Confused, in pain, and unable to walk, a 14-year-old girl rides piggyback on her much smaller mother, who is carrying her to see Dr. Michael Miller.
For them, it is a godsend that the clinical professor of neurology from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Bassett Healthcare Network happens to be volunteering at Nhi Dong Hospital 1 in Ho Chi Minh City this week through the Project Vietnam Foundation, a non-profit that provides pediatric care to the country’s underserved populations.
Bassett neurologist Michael Miller says Vietnam's pediatric hospitals should focus less on technology, and more on old-fashioned physical exams. Here, Miller examines a boy during a week-long humanitarian mission in March 2011.
Doctors at Vietnam’s 1,200-bed national pediatric facility couldn’t diagnose the girl’s problem, even after doing an MRI scan and observing her for 10 days. But experienced eyes and ears managed to discover what had eluded technology.
After spending a half an hour with the girl – more time than any other doctor at Nhi Dong could spare – Miller diagnoses her with Brown-Sequard Syndrome. Unfortunately, the rare form of paralysis, caused by an injury to the spinal cord, can’t be cured. But Miller recommends physical therapy that could dramatically improve her quality of life.
After doing rounds with Nhi Dong’s doctors and teaching them about neurological treatments in the U.S., Miller recommends that the hospital adopt simple procedures like Apgar scores, an easy way to assess newborn health, and head circumference measurements. Such tasks merely require time – not expensive technology – yet could dramatically improve quality of care.
“They think technology is going to be the answer to their problems when really, getting a full history and doing a thorough physical exam is the most important thing,” Miller says.
Aside from providing goodwill, Miller wanted a chance to see, first-hand, diseases eradicated long ago in the Western world, such as polio, tetanus and botulism. Things he has only seen in textbooks. “This is like practicing neurology in Paris in the 1840s or London in the 1890s or New York in the 1930s,” he says. “There’s much to learn.”
Even though he had to pay for his own airfare and lodging to volunteer in Vietnam, Miller is willing to do it again. He is surprised at how much fun he’s having, even though he can’t understand the language.
“I simply find the people joyful and charming,” he says. “They’ve been very open and kind.” For those interested in donating to the Project Vietnam Foundation, even money for little things, like hand sanitizer in all the hospital rooms to prevent the spread of disease, can reap big benefits.
“It’s amazing how far a little bit money can go here,” Miller says. “People are doing wonderful things with a pittance.”
 |
| Bassett neurologist Michael Miller says Vietnam's pediatric hospitals should focus less on technology, and more on old-fashioned physical exams. Here, Miller examines a boy during a week-long humanitarian mission in March 2011. |
ON CALL FOR CARE IN VIETNAM
Back to basics for Bassett neurologist in Southeast Asia
--Trang Ho, special correspondent
Source: Columbia Magazine March 2011
and the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons website.
Confused, in pain, and unable to walk, a 14-year-old girl rides piggyback on her much smaller mother, who is carrying her to see Dr. Michael Miller.
For them, it is a godsend that the clinical professor of neurology from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Bassett Healthcare Network happens to be volunteering at Nhi Dong Hospital 1 in Ho Chi Minh City this week through the Project Vietnam Foundation, a non-profit that provides pediatric care to the country’s underserved populations.
Bassett neurologist Michael Miller says Vietnam's pediatric hospitals should focus less on technology, and more on old-fashioned physical exams. Here, Miller examines a boy during a week-long humanitarian mission in March 2011.
Doctors at Vietnam’s 1,200-bed national pediatric facility couldn’t diagnose the girl’s problem, even after doing an MRI scan and observing her for 10 days. But experienced eyes and ears managed to discover what had eluded technology.
After spending a half an hour with the girl – more time than any other doctor at Nhi Dong could spare – Miller diagnoses her with Brown-Sequard Syndrome. Unfortunately, the rare form of paralysis, caused by an injury to the spinal cord, can’t be cured. But Miller recommends physical therapy that could dramatically improve her quality of life.
After doing rounds with Nhi Dong’s doctors and teaching them about neurological treatments in the U.S., Miller recommends that the hospital adopt simple procedures like Apgar scores, an easy way to assess newborn health, and head circumference measurements. Such tasks merely require time – not expensive technology – yet could dramatically improve quality of care.
“They think technology is going to be the answer to their problems when really, getting a full history and doing a thorough physical exam is the most important thing,” Miller says.
Aside from providing goodwill, Miller wanted a chance to see, first-hand, diseases eradicated long ago in the Western world, such as polio, tetanus and botulism. Things he has only seen in textbooks. “This is like practicing neurology in Paris in the 1840s or London in the 1890s or New York in the 1930s,” he says. “There’s much to learn.”
Even though he had to pay for his own airfare and lodging to volunteer in Vietnam, Miller is willing to do it again. He is surprised at how much fun he’s having, even though he can’t understand the language.
“I simply find the people joyful and charming,” he says. “They’ve been very open and kind.” For those interested in donating to the Project Vietnam Foundation, even money for little things, like hand sanitizer in all the hospital rooms to prevent the spread of disease, can reap big benefits.
“It’s amazing how far a little bit money can go here,” Miller says. “People are doing wonderful things with a pittance.”
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