Mindy Parks, RN: Nurse Ratched? Not Really, (shhh...don't tell anyone).

Mindy Parks, RN

She said that her father, a physical therapist, was “big in York Hospital.” All of his friends were from his work, and she remembers being “surrounded by doctors.” She recalls going with him to Barley’s nursing home and to an Easterseals location “near Vo-Tech.” She remembers her father gently dipping a patient’s hands into melted paraffin to ease their arthritic pain. These vivid memories are like they were “just yesterday.”  But the indelible images were formed more than fifty years ago, as her father had a melanoma and died on Christmas Eve when nurse Mindy Parks was three. 

She cannot forget taking his socks off after their trip to Hershey for the "Ice Capades" and asking him about the dark spot on his foot. And she can still visualize the lines painted on his chest to guide the futile radiotherapy. But young Mindy was not permitted to attend her father’s funeral, and she wonders whether it would have helped her emotionally to have been there.

Her mother worked as a hairdresser at York’s Misericordia Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, and her grandmother served as the facility’s receptionist. Encouraged to join them, Mindy spent a few summers “with the nuns.” When she was “forced” to volunteer at another nursing home (Colonial Manor) on the other side of town, she helped out with the Arts and Crafts program. She said she “couldn’t stand it,” and she vowed to “never” work with patients again.

Early Schooling and First Jobs

A year after her father passed away, her mother began a serious relationship, but she didn’t get married again until twelve years later. So she raised Mindy and her two (considerably) older brothers as a single parent. As a result, Mindy was “shuffled” among her grandparents to help out. And as she was “with older people” and had “no real direction,” all she did, she said, was “eat and gain weight.” Being “the fat kid” (one of only three) in school, she was picked on and bullied. She withdrew. School became unimportant, though she did well enough in math to consider going into accounting.

She often came home from school to an empty house (her brothers were out), and she sat in front of the TV. She started working at the Weis supermarket (just a few blocks from home) when she was 15, because she “had to.” And as her job soon began to mean more to her than school, she developed a strong work ethic.  

In fact, Mindy didn’t enjoy learning at all at Suburban High School, and “barely passed.” After she had a falling out with her mother, she decided she needed to be on her own. She moved into an apartment and required another job to support herself. She found work at Kay Jewelers. A few years passed, and as Mindy was still struggling to find herself, she took the SATs several times. She tried a few courses at York College, but didn’t have a good experience. 

With her knack for numbers, she took classes in “bookkeeping, or accounting, or something,” she vaguely recalled, but didn’t finish the full program. She continued to work at the supermarket, and found a job with a family-owned jewelry store, White’s. She worked hard (including putting in a lot of overtime) and eventually had enough money to buy her first house. But, she admitted, during this time she “wasted a lot of money buying friendship or love.”

White's Jewelry Shop (Uncredited and undated photo from Yelp)

Mindy focused on customer service at White’s, and she enjoyed helping people. She treated everyone equally, “whether they came in for a (watch) battery or a Rolex.” She liked the people and knew, she said, “not to judge a book by its cover.” And she learned a lot about people. For example, she reminded the engineers looking for the perfect engagement ring for their fiancée that “all she cares about is how pretty it looks.” 

Two Unanticipated Events and the Turn to Nursing

Her plan at the jeweler’s was to one day take over the shop. And as the hyped Y2K event (marking the year 2000) approached, this seemed possible. We were warned that computers wouldn’t know what to do when the new millennium arrived since their internal clocks stored the year in two digits, and that things would get messy. 

According to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, “the fear was that when clocks struck midnight on January 1, 2000, affected computer systems, unsure of the year, would fail to operate and cause massive power outages, transportation systems to shut down, and banks to close. Widespread chaos would ensue.” 

As the threat of the end of the world led to panic buying and hoarding. White’s (including Mindy) made a lot of money; they were “selling stuff like there was no tomorrow,” she said. But the heady business cycle would change abruptly less than two years later, on September 11, 2001.  After that shock, “nobody was buying jewelry,” and Mindy needed to look elsewhere for a reliable income.

After selling jewelry and working at the Weis supermarket for 13 years, and in her thirties, with her early-life experiences in healthcare, Mindy thought about going into nursing. She looked into LPN and CNA programs at Vo-Tech.  One of her good customers, a psychiatrist no longer in practice, Dr. Marilyn Adam, saw her skills with people and encouraged her to pursue the LPN track. This tipped the scales, and Mindy began her new career. She was able to work part-time as she took (and paid for) the 11-month LPN program. She did well and won a few awards. She surprised herself: “Who knew I would love to learn!?

York Newspaper clipping of Mindy's LPN graduation
(Mindy was awarded a certificate of excellence in "Theory."
And she was recognized for perfect attendance. 

After completing the program in 2002, she took a position at York Hospital. She said that she “gave meds and did dressing changes and stuff like that.” After she was there for a few months, one of her patients set her up on a blind date with her son, the man who would later become her husband.

From LPN to RN to Charge Nurse

And after working as an LPN “for a year or two,”  Mindy saw that she “could do this.” So she moved forward and enrolled in an online RN program with Excelsior University (before it was announced that the hospital would restrict the nursing staff to RNs).  She studied intently and taught herself nursing, sociology, and psychology (she always did well with “psych patients” because, she said with a quick laugh, she “had a lot of training at home”). 

As she worked on her Associate’s degree, including weekend clinical time, Mindy figured out how to take tests. And when she did the required in-person evaluations in Indiana and Ohio, seeing patients, she knew what to expect and carefully “followed their script.” She finished the program, did an externship, and passed the NCLEX-RN exam for her RN license.

At first, Mindy spent time on a few floors at the hospital where she didn’t quite fit in. Moving around, she eventually found her niche on the Ortho-Trauma-Neuro floor in 2008, and she has been there ever since. She loves what she does, and as she developed more confidence in her abilities two years ago, she became “charge nurse,” where she is responsible for overseeing the nursing needs of the entire floor of up to 57 patients. Her goal, she told me, is “to keep the ship sailing nice and smooth.”

Reflecting on Changes

In the 23 years she has been at York Hospital, she feels that while the basics of nursing have not changed much (despite the emphasis on evidence-based practice), it seems to her that the nurses have. 

(An aside: What is the essence of what it means to nurse--a term derived from words meaning to nourish or to nurture? According to Sarah DiGregorio, nursing is a holistic endeavor that addresses the physical, emotional, social, and even spiritual needs of the cared-for individual. As such, practicing comprehensive nursing is a remarkably complicated undertaking, and it is particularly challenging to apply these ideals of care in an acute hospital setting.)

Mindy noted, with an element of chagrin, that some nurses under her charge are “task-oriented” rather than being focused on the patient. Their screens on their mobile computer carts  display icons that inform them of what they have to do, ”how to do their job.”  While such reminders of the many things that need to be addressed during a 12-hour shift may be helpful, the nurses may be inadvertently distracted from their primary responsibility, that of caring for the patient.  Mindy often reminds her staff that they are there for the patient; the patient is not there for them. 

Sue Ludwig, RN

As a tough preceptor (her stepfather called her “Nurse Ratched” even before she went into nursing), she instructed her trainees to talk to their patients to get to know them as people with a history. Don’t “just give them a pill and rush out of the room!” she said.  She had learned that taking time, and asking patients about their work, for example, encouraged them to open up, and this quickly helped build a therapeutic relationship.

She admitted that it’s easier to do this at night, her usual shift, when there’s less commotion on the floor and more time to be with the patient. (Mindy still stays in touch with one of her own formative nursing preceptors, Sue Ludwig, and they frequently take walks together. Mindy recalls often saying this to Sue: “Let me do it myself.”) 

But forming a nurturing relationship between the nurse and her patient doesn’t seem to be the stated intent of a recent hospital innovation: An AI-powered virtual nursing program. This commercial system is designed, according to the WellSpan Health website, to allow “a nursing assistant to use a computer module to remotely monitor patients who are at risk for falls, are forgetful, or may be impulsive about (sic) pulling out lines or tubes needed for their care.”  

But, continuing, it may also allow “a nurse to use a computer to remotely conduct discharges, admissions, and patient education.”  So there are now huge flat-screen monitors in each room, complete with two-way audio and video. Patients can be watched from afar throughout their stay, and they can be discharged by someone, somewhere, who has never touched them or even seen them in the flesh. The actual discharge nurse on the floor has to do something, said Mindy, even if it is just handing the patient their discharge papers.

(After some time, will the nurse on the screen be a live person using AI, or a sophisticated AI-generated image of a person indistinguishable from the real thing? We will almost certainly be encountering this dilemma soon as a result of the remarkable power of machine learning and the ongoing--and global--shortage of nurses.)

A Bachelor's Degree and a Managerial Position

Advancing her education, Mindy received a Bachelor’s degree online from the rigorous Chamberlain University College of Nursing. Since she was “horrible” in high school English, she had to teach this to herself. But she “loved school so much” by then that she made sure that her assignments were sent in at 12:01 on the day they were due, so hers would be the first. 

During the two-year program, she wrote several papers on the ideal patient-to-nurse ratio (4 to 1 seems about right) and the harmful metabolic consequences of ingesting large amounts of prepared food or (especially) drink containing high-fructose corn syrup. The teacher showed some of her papers to the other students as examples of good work. Mindy was proud of that unexpected recognition. 

As part of the curriculum, she took a class on the Vietnam War. At first, she “hated” it and had to repeatedly refer to maps to orient herself. But as she learned about the horrors of the undeclared war and the means by which the soldiers coped  (by using morphine and marijuana to dull their senses) and met patients from Vietnam, the eye-opening class turned out to be her “favorite.” 

And, through this, she was able to recognize the acute severe PTSD reaction of a Vietnam veteran (“the guy went nuts”) who was mistakenly admitted to the one room on the third floor with a close-up view of the (busy) helicopter pad.  

Trying to Comfort Another Soldier in Vietnam
(Credit: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund)

(This reminded me of my experience in that very room in January 2025.  I was admitted to the hospital with a cerebral bleed and briefly lost the ability to speak or understand what was being said to me. When I was transferred from the ICU to a regular floor, Mindy–as the charge nurse on Tower 3–stopped by on her rounds. I was still aphasic, but I recognized her from years ago and was glad to see her. But that night, the flashing lights and the whirring noise as several helicopters landed and took off in the icy cold–it had snowed the night before–made me panic. I needed to get out of there. I had already scheduled an interview with a doctor for their story, and I couldn’t let them down. And I was quite fidgety, as I had not been given any medication for my COVID-19-triggered Parkinson’s since admission. My husband stayed by my side–in the bed!–and settled me down.)  

Returning to Mindy: At the time of the interview, she told me that she was preparing for a new role, that of Assistant Nurse Manager on her floor. Though she will be away from bedside nursing herself, she is looking forward to the challenge, as quality nursing, she said, is her passion.

And looking back, Mindy said that her father was a perfectionist and that if he had not died early, she would have been a lawyer or a doctor.  There is no question about that, she believes. And she is sure that her life would have been completely different. But I am just as certain that her father would have been extremely proud of how his daughter turned out and what she has accomplished on her own and on her own terms.

References and Suggested Readings:

1. Aiken LH, Clarke SP, Sloane DM, Sochalski J, Silber JH. "Hospital Nurse Staffing and Patient Mortality, Nurse Burnout, and Job Dissatisfaction." JAMA. 2002;288(16):1987–1993. (Each additional patient per nurse was associated with a 7%  increase in the likelihood of dying within 30 days of admission and a  23%  increase in the odds of nurse burnout.)

2. Bray, George er al. Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2004, Volume 79, Issue 4, 537-543. (The consumption of high-fructose corn syrup increased more than 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, "mirroring the rapid increase in obesity" in the US. But sucrose--table sugar--has nearly the same amount of fructose and is similar in its negative metabolic effects.)

3. DiGregorio, Sarah. Taking Care: The Story of Nursing and Its Power to Change Our World. New York: HarperCollins, 2023. (An extesively researched, well-written and important book by a journalist. In the reporting of the book she spoke ro "nurses who practice in thoughtful, innovative ways that respond to the innate right of every person and community to be valued and cared for," p. 200).

4. National Museum of American History, Behring Center. "Y2K" Accessed at https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/y2k.

Watercolor Sketch Anticipating Spring (Photo by SC)

By Anita Cherry 2/11/26

By the way, two volumes of these collected stories are now available on Amazon. Volume 1 is here, and Volume 2 is found here.

Volume 1

Volume 2

Poonam Agarwal, CRNP: She is Finding Her Way

Poonam Agarwal CRNP

It was bright and sunny–the deep blue sky was cloudless. It was her second week at NYU in Lower Manhattan. Having left the protective cocoon of her hometown in South Central Pennsylvania, Poonam wanted to be part of the city she had often visited with her parents. She did not want to be isolated on a college campus. 

Her freshman chemistry class ended early, and there was time to enjoy the warm weather that Tuesday morning. But as she was leaving the building and heading toward her dorm near Washington Park, only two blocks away, she heard a kid yelling, “A plane ran into the Twin Towers!” She looked around and saw that people were sitting on the ground, crying into their phones. She didn’t know what to think. 

The TV was on when she got back to her room, and she saw that, she said, “This was real.” Her neighbor’s suite had a shocking head-on view of the Towers, directly confirming the horror of the day.  When Poonam and her classmates went out to the street again, it was, she said, “surreal.” Looking toward the billowing smoke from massive burning structures, she realized that she was seeing people who had leapt from the suffocating buildings and that they were falling through the air to their deaths. 

After a while, the father of one of her classmates came to the dorm in a daze, “covered in dust and dirt,” dragging his jacket behind him, looking “like a homeless person.”  He banged on his daughter’s door: “Let me in!” The situation was terrifyingly grim. 

Stunned New Yorkers on 9/11/01 (Credit: Mario Tama)

Poonam and her stunned colleagues didn’t know what to do. They wanted to help. Could they, for instance, donate blood? No, they didn’t have the required donor cards needed for emergency situations. Where to turn?

Poonam called her aunt, who lived in the city, and she was safe. She called her mom. She talked with her father, the trauma surgeon Nikhilesh Agarwal, who offered help. Though in New York for only a few weeks, she felt connected to the city under attack and didn’t want to leave. The following day, as she walked down the middle of Sixth Avenue, she said, “It was like a dead city, a ghost town.”  But “you felt part of something,” and “one with the city.” 

Looking back nearly twenty-five years later, Poonam feels “honored” to have been there in 2001. But she is unable to watch the anniversary programs. She doesn’t like the fact that a “giant grave-site,” a sacred place, has been turned into just another casual tourist destination to be checked off.  

(One of her father’s close colleagues, the heart surgeon Dr. John Mathai, lost his brother that day. The 49-year-old Joseph “Minoo” Mathai was attending an important tech conference on the 107th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the first plane struck. Years later, Poonam searched for, and found, his name inscribed on the bronze parapet surrounding the deep, unfilled reflecting pools precisely where the iconic Towers once stood.)

9/11 Memorial Reflecting Pool (Credit: Marley White)

Poonam said that 9/11 made it “extra hard to focus on her classwork in college as she was “struggling” with finding “purpose.” She engaged in deep “self-reflecting at the time.”  And she believes that the experience probably affected her later career path.

As the daughter of a physician-father (who never thought of his practice as “work”) and an ICU nurse-mother, Poonam entered NYU, in her words, “as a medical student wanna be.” But she didn’t start college as a premed; she was a Liberal Arts major. 

Biology was her favorite subject at Country Day School in York, and she was quite discouraged when she got a C on her first college exam in that discipline.  The large Freshman classes were taught by a team of professors with different styles, and “shy and introverted” Poonam, accustomed to the intimacy of a small private school, was in culture shock. 

For that formative first semester (after dropping calculus following the first class), she did better in chemistry and did okay in the required writing course (though Poonam said that her much-older half-sister was “the writer” in the family). As the goal of being a physician slowly faded, and she had enjoyed an economics course, when it was time to declare a specific major, she innocently picked economics.  

She recalled that in the early 2000s, healthcare public policy was a topical issue. She could combine her interest in medicine with her studies in economics. So, as a student, she got a job in the planning department of the prestigious NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Within the health policy division, she worked with spreadsheets, set up events for the bigwig donors in the city, and made labels.   It wasn't fulfilling.

Still undecided about what to do, Poonam took a summer semester job at Time Warner Publishing. She was part of an all-female department of sales and marketing. One of the highlights was meeting humorist David Sedaris, who signed his new book (probably Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, but she couldn’t recall) for her. While there, she witnessed the “glass ceiling” preventing women from moving into the highest management positions. And by the end of the summer, she sensed that all women working together may sometimes hurt themselves; she didn’t want to be part of that.

View of Columbus Circle and Central Park
from the Time Warner Center (Credit: enclos)

As her wise father had already planted the idea of a nursing career, where she would have plenty of options to choose from for a career, Poonam decided to stay at NYU, at the Rory Meyers College of Nursing (a very competitive school), for a nursing degree. She wanted to stay in the wounded city that, after four years, had become part of her. She could have done the accelerated program, but as she desired to be a New Yorker as long as possible, she took the “extended route.” 

She enjoyed nursing school, did well, and as she finished the two years of study, she looked for a job near home, near her parents. She applied for a plum job in the cardiac ICU at the University of Maryland (the same institution where her father had done his advanced training in trauma care). When it was offered to her, she said that she “couldn’t turn it down.”

Poonam accepted the position. She told me that she greatly enjoyed working with such a “unique group” of people on the night shift, as they took care of “really sick patients.”  She didn’t feel that it was “work.”  She was happy there.

Nurses in the Critical Care Resuscitation Unit
at the University of Maryland (Credit: UM) 

Unfortunately, she hurt her back (as nurses often do) during "the first year or two," and she eventually had to negotiate the unfriendly Worker’s Compensation system. As the nagging lower back pain continued, Poonam felt that she could not function as an ICU nurse forever, and after four rewarding years at the busy downtown Baltimore university, she searched for less physically demanding (but still fulfilling) work.

What was the next step? What does a former ICU nurse do next to keep the adrenaline rush she was used to?  Poonam quickly rejected the idea of becoming a Nurse Practitioner, seeing routine patients and sending in prescriptions for their medicines. She wanted to utilize the skills she developed in the ICU.  Skills such as monitoring and treating dangerous blood pressure fluctuations and potentially fatal heart rhythms. It seemed that working in the OR as a nurse anesthetist might be ideal, being, in her words, “what an ICU nurse does.”

She was accepted to the York College and the University of Maryland programs; she decided on York. So she moved back home and lived with her parents. At first, she was happy with things, and she really liked the didactic material. But as time passed, and she got into the clinical work, she became increasingly uncomfortable with the brusque, sometimes military style of teaching (a simulated intubation went especially poorly). After taking some time off to think, and a trip to India for her cousin’s wedding, Poonam reluctantly resumed her studies

York College of Pennsylvania (Credit: York Dispatch)

But with only two semesters to go, she was so unhappy that she was compelled to withdraw from the program altogether. It was a difficult (and costly) decision. As a perfectionist, she felt like a failure, but her concerned parents were supportive. (We do want our children to be happy.)

Poonam could not return to bedside nursing, risking recurring back troubles. So, in 2015, she took a telemedicine ICU job with the University of Maryland Health System. Intently watching a bank of computer screens, the nurses covered eleven small outlying hospitals that did not have an in-house intensivist at night. 

This sedentary job allowed Poonam to pursue a Master of Science in Nursing at York College, after which she could be certified as a Nurse Practitioner. As she worked nights in Maryland, she studied diligently in Pennsylvania during the day. Her declared focus was geriatric primary care, and she especially enjoyed her rotations in orthopedics and palliative care. After completing the rigorous two-year program in 2018, she took a job with Orthopaedic and Spine Specialists (OSS) inYork. 

After a while, working at OSS was not her thing, and she began to dread Mondays. So, in June of 2020, as COVID-19 was impacting the community terribly and the ICUs were full, Poonam took a position in the other area she had been drawn to, given some of her experiences of critical illness and death and dying in the ICU, palliative care.  

This comprehensive, holistic, patient-centered consultative service is designed to help individuals and families navigate chronic progressive illness. It can be employed at any stage; it is not to be confused with end-of-life hospice care, though it does deal with issues surrounding death. The local UPMC program, based in Harrisburg, involves working at seven central Pennsylvania sites. 

Elements of palliative care (Credit: SSMHealth)

As of late 2025 (the time of our interview), Poonam had been doing palliative care for more than five years. She has learned much. Among other insights, she has seen that chronic illness and death “will either bring a family together or tear it apart.” 

Her words reminded me of something I was told many years ago by a woman working in oncology (I believe she was a seasoned nurse, but I’m not certain). She said that, in her experience, fifty percent of people can handle illness and dying in their loved ones and can be present and compassionate. The remaining fifty percent, for whatever reason, simply cannot. It seems to be built into their nature. 

Poonam has seen this dichotomy of reactions even in her own family, as her dying mother was hospitalized five times in 2023 and was eventually transitioned to hospice.  But Poonam, as a palliative care nurse, knew the importance of being there for her mother (and her father). 

Despite the demands of her own work, her family was her priority at that difficult time, and she took the necessary time off to be with them. However, the absences strained her position with UPMC, though she couldn’t be in two places at the same time. She was conflicted, and even thought about resigning, but things eventually worked out. Her mother passed away peacefully in December 2024 with the loving end-of-life support from her husband and her two daughters.

Poonam is optimistic that the quality of such care (including sufficient education for all involved parties) can be improved, especially if the palliative care team (and it requires a team) is engaged earlier in the disease process instead of often waiting until nearly the end. And one might even consider changing the name of the service altogether to just “supportive care,” to reflect the real goal of better management of advanced disease while avoiding the often dark "hospice" specter of “giving up.” 

Poonam had been making the rushed and harried commute to Harrisburg from York, but she was subsequently transferred to Hanover, making her life a bit easier. While things are not fully in place yet, she’s working on developing a program for patients with late-stage heart failure. She told me that barriers to effective communication, both among the medical staff and with (and within) the families, remain, and are real challenges. In her frustrated words: “We all just need to talk to each other!”  

And when the clinical situation requires urgent critical input, those responsible for making decisions must be readily available (she had found that they are too often not). 

This reminded Poonam of a recurring scene from her childhood: As a trauma surgeon, her father usually took his “beeper” or pager with him everywhere. But if he was outside working on the lawn, he left it in the house.  When it beeped, when it summoned him, Poonam would quickly rush out to find her father to let him know that he was needed.  Her mother’s illness taught her a lot about the painful process of dying. He father’s dedication taught her something else. She carries both lessons with her as she waits to be needed.

Suggested Readings:

1. Boston University Staff. "How 9/11 Changed the World: BU faculty reflect on how that day's events have reshaped our lives over the last 20 years." BU Today, September 8, 2021. ("The fires of 9/11 continue to burn.")

2. Brown, Deborah X, RN, BSN. "Nurses and Preventable Back Injuries."  American Journal of Critical Care, September 2003, Volume 12, No. 5, p. 400-401. ("Disabling back injury and back pain affect 38% of nursing staff." The author recommends the use of a dedicated "lift team" for all total body transfers," to prevent potentially career-ending injuries.)

3. Strand, Jacob, MD, Mihir Kamdar, MD, and Elise Cary, MD. "Top 10 Things Palliative Care Clinicians Wished Everyone Knew About Palliative Care. Mayo Clin Proc.  August 2013; 88(8): 859-865. (#2: "Palliative care is appropriate at any stage of serious illness.")

By Anita Cherry 1/14/26

Odd cloud formation at Reservoir Park (Photo by SC)

Volume 1

Volume 2

Two volumes of collected stories are available in print.

Dr. Samuel Laucks: It's a Wonderful Life

I met Dr. Sam Laucks at the visitation before Dr. Eamonn Boyle’s funeral last summer. Some time later, my husband suggested that Sam might tell us his story. 

As the regular readers know, in some of these stories, the protagonists have escaped from suffocating Fascist or Communist totalitarian regimes or from frightening civil wars and widespread famine. In others, young men and women have left their families behind and traveled halfway around the world in search of more education and work. 

Dr. Laucks

In some, the trainees repeatedly faced hurtful, subtle, or even frankly blatant racial prejudice and hatred. In a few stories, the doctors suddenly became patients themselves, developing acute life-threatening illness requiring a helicopter trip to a university center or a swift gurney ride to the OR for extensive brain surgery. And so on. This story is not one of them.

In fact, quiet Dr. Laucks wondered how he got to be, in his words, “so unbelievably lucky.” 

Sam started out by telling me that he was “a local guy.”  He was born at York Hospital in the mid-1950s. He was delivered, he knew, by Dr. Robert Farkas. In the US, the cost of the delivery and five-day hospital stay would have been less than $200 (about $1800 in today’s money) compared to about $20,000 today. (Times have changed, noted Sam–his daughter couldn’t recall the names of the obstetricians who delivered her two children just a few years ago, and she didn’t think that was unusual.)

Family and Early Life

His family has deep roots in York County, and he grew up about five minutes from the hospital. Sam said that he had a “very good childhood” and “supportive parents.”  His attorney-father and his college-educated mother were both active in civic affairs. He considers himself fortunate to have grown up in these circumstances. 

Early on at York Suburban High School (frequently rated top in the county), he knew he wanted to go into medicine, so he spent the last two years there trying to think about how to make this happen. 

He is sure that several of his teachers paved the way for his success in college. At the top of the short list was his calculus teacher, Janis Snell. He recalled that she was very demanding and strict.  Since math was never really Sam’s subject, and he was in a college-level class, he got a C–the only C he received in either junior or senior high. 

But when he went to Ursinus College outside of Philadelphia (his father’s alma mater) as a premed Biology major, and most of his classmates struggled terribly in calculus, he breezed through with an A, and tutored his less well-prepared buddies. 

Ursinus College Campus (Credit: Ursinus College)

Sam also credits his high school biology teacher (for two years), Scotty Bickelman, for teaching him “how scientists are supposed to think,” and “how science works.” In the broad liberal arts tradition, he was taught how to think, not what to think. He was taught to think critically.

Medical School

Following Ursinus, he went to Thomas Jefferson Medical College. Though this originally wasn’t his first choice, it turned out to be the right place for him as the focus of the school was on the practical matters of actually being a physician, not a doctor who did research. He lived in Center City Philadelphia, and “it was fun.” And it was through his formative surgical rotation at the Catholic Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Darby (now affiliated with Drexel) that Sam met his wife, Jeanne, a nurse. 

Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Darby (Credit: Delco.Today)

Through medical school, he thought about doing general internal medicine or general surgery. He eventually chose the latter. When he graduated in 1981, after the urging of York surgeons Dr. Robert Davis and Dr. Thomas Bauer (who knew him through his volunteer work at the hospital), and after seeing for himself that all of the surgical residents in the nearby (academic) Penn State Hershey program looked unhappy, he returned home for his five-year surgical residency at the (clinically-oriented) large community hospital. 

Residency and Fellowship

York Hospital had just hired its first full-time program director of their surgical residency, the trauma surgeon Dr. Nikhilesh Agarwal. In the beginning, the training followed what might be considered the “apprenticeship” model.  In this, one or more residents worked with a single attending surgeon for a while and dealt with a variety of cases as they came along. For example, there might be a few simple inguinal hernias followed by a routine, uncomplicated appendectomy, but the next patient could need the complex, lengthy so-called Whipple procedure for pancreatic cancer.

This “real life” experience eventually gave way to a schedule whereby trainees started with the easy stuff consistent with their new skills and gradually learned the advanced techniques for progressively more demanding procedures. 

Dr. Laucks said that each approach to learning his craft has strengths and weaknesses, and he would not choose one over the other.

By his third or fourth year, one of the senior residents who was two years ahead of him mentioned the idea of specializing in the new field of dedicated colorectal surgery. Sam liked the concept and followed his colleague’s advice (and track) and did a one-year fellowship at the long-standing and well-regarded Ferguson Clinic in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

View of Grand Rapids, Michigan (Credit: HBMAGAZINE)

Practice

He wanted to have a specialty, but didn’t want to give up general surgery, so when he came back to York, he joined William Shue’s solo general surgery practice. Having already worked with him as a resident, Sam thought very highly of Dr. Shue “as a surgeon and as a person.” Bill, noted Sam, cared about his patients, knew his own limitations, and had (that rare attribute of) “common sense.” His surgical outcomes were excellent, and he was “kind and generous.” The partnership worked out “wonderfully well,” noted Sam.

Dr. Shue

In time, Dr. Shue retired, and additional surgeons, including Dr. Tom Scott, Dr. Paul Sipe, Dr. Dan Henriksen, and Dr. Heather Thieme, joined the group. And as the business of American medicine evolved, the private group was folded into the large regional WellSpan Health System. There was always an easy camaraderie among the physicians in the group, and Dr. Laucks said that “over three generations,” nobody left the practice because they couldn’t get along. They all agreed on the important things. (Heather eventually left, but the reason was external.)

The members of the group all settled into their niche of what they liked to do and what they did best. Dr. Laucks told me that he was “not a natural when it came to being a technician.”  He soon recognized the critical importance of good judgment when it came to making decisions about surgery. As he said, “Not everybody needs an operation.” And the longer he was in practice, the more patients he turned down for surgery. He took the classic “First, Do No Harm” dictum very seriously.

Colorectal Cancer

As Dr. Laucks spent about two-thirds of his practice doing colorectal surgery (not counting colonoscopies), we talked a bit about colon cancer and the fact that while this has been mostly a disease of older age, it is now being diagnosed in younger people.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third or fourth most commonly diagnosed cancer and the second most common cause of cancer-related death. About 10% are related to specific underlying genetic factors, while 90% are not, and are sporadic, and almost certainly related to environment and diet. It has been said that more than one-half of all cases and deaths are attributable to modifiable risk factors, such as smoking, an unhealthy diet, high alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, and excess body weight.

Risk Factors for Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer (Credit: Loyola Medicine)

Dr. Laucks told me that most (but not all) CRCs begin as benign polyps, and that their evolution to malignancy may often take about eight years. If polyps are found and removed early on, the risk of CRC goes down considerably (but not, unfortunately, to zero). 

Regular screening is important, and it now seems that this should begin at age 45 instead of 50.  Dr. Laucks still believes that routine colonoscopy (especially by an experienced, well-trained endoscopist) remains the best screening tool and is the gold standard. Not only are suspicious lesions identified, they are removed, and cancer is prevented. The at-home stool sample tests (including the FIT and Cologuard immunologic tests) are quite good and are getting better, but a colonoscopy is still needed if there are “positive” results (including those that are “false-positive”). 

Screening imaging (including a tiny swallowed camera that slowly makes its way down the long tube that is the GI tract) is getting better at finding suspicious lesions. But, again, the expert endoscopist is needed to biopsy or remove the growths.  

Since most CRCs grow slowly, being able to pick them up early, before they have spread, usually results in a cure.  Because symptoms of the developing cancer are often lacking or nonspecific, regular screening is highly recommended. 

You may ask, “Am I at risk for colorectal cancer?” I have read that one in fifteen men and one in eighteen women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with bowel cancer in their lifetime. The risk factors are complex and, as mentioned, include age, genetics, diet, and unclear environmental exposures. Suffice it to say that if you have a colon or a rectum, you are at risk.

Changes in Surgery

At this point, it should be noted that Sam’s practice of general surgery changed quite a bit over the decades. As a result of the remarkable advances in diagnostic imaging, his hard-won clinical skills of obtaining an accurate history and carefully examining the “acute abdomen” with his eyes, his ears, and his hands to determine if the belly needed to be opened have been made less relevant and nearly obsolete by CT and MRI (especially with the help of AI). Dr. Laucks freely admitted that “imaging is frequently better than the clinical exam.”  But he agreed that the personal exam by the surgeon supplies important intangible benefits for the anxious patient that cannot be measured.

Sam also noted that minimally invasive surgical techniques developed during his career, including laparoscopic and so-called robotic surgery, reduced postoperative pain and recovery times for patients. The first laparoscopic colectomies were performed in 1991, and robotic surgery of the colon using the da Vinci device (overcoming some of the intrinsic limitations of laparoscopy) was initially reported in 2001.   

Da Vinci Robotic-Assisted Surgery (Credit: Glasgow Colorectal Centre)

Retirement from Surgery

Dr. Laucks retired from the practice of surgery nine years ago, at age 62, three years after his group, White Rose Surgical Associates, was folded into WellSpan Health. By then, he had already cut back his hours and his on-call responsibilities.  Since then, he has been employed part-time at several WellSpan wound centers. He appreciates the expertise and support of the wound Care nurses whose hard work makes his job easy. 

He and his wife give their daughter’s two young children their “full attention” three days a week. And, staying busy, Sam does an “array of little things.” He plays the French horn in several local bands, and he (like his father) joined the ancient Freemasons fraternal organization, where he enjoys the diversity of meeting people from all walks of life and different religious and political perspectives. 

He said that he regularly reads The York Daily Record, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. He is saddened by the fact that widespread “bias and prejudice” are still very much with us, and not relegated to the distant past. He wondered why we don’t learn from history.

And, curiously, remarkably lucky Dr. Samuel Laucks, a semi-retired colorectal surgeon whose life story so far contains no major obstacles or mishaps or wrong turns, confesses that he is sometimes prone to complain “about the minor nuisances in life.” He even admits that while his benign grumbling is a bad habit, it can sometimes be (tongue-in-cheek) one of his “favorite pastimes.”  Nevertheless, he noted, with true sincerity, that he is “grateful to have been so abundantly blessed with a wonderful family, wonderful friends, wonderful colleagues, and with a fulfilling personal life and a successful professional career.” No drama required. 

Suggested Readings:

1. Cope, Zachary (revised by William Silen). Cope's Early Diagnosis of the Acute Abdomen, 21st Edition. Oxford. Oxford University Press, 2005. (Still essential reading, focusing on the history and physical examination of the patient with acute abdominal pain, but going beyond that.)  

2. Pitiakoudis, Michail et al. "Artificial Intelligence in Colorectal Cancer Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment. A New Era." Current Oncology, 2021, 28, 1581–1607. (An in-depth article that I could not understand at all, whose conclusion is: "Computer-aided systems can provide physicians with assistance in detecting and diagnosing precancerous lesions or early-stage CRC. Several novel algorithms have shown promising results for the accurate detection and characterization of suspected lesions.") 

3. Rex, Douglas et al. "Colorectal Cancer Screening: Recommendations for Physicians and Patients from the U.S. Multi-Society Task Force on Colorectal Cancer." American Journal of Gastrenterology, 2017 July; 112(7), 10161030.  ("The first-tier tests are colonoscopy every 10 years and annual fecal immunochemical tests." Colonoscopy is offered first, and FIT should be offered to patients who decline colonoscopy.)     

4. Zhang, Jiaxin et al."Colonoscopic screening is associated with reduced colorectal cancer incidence and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis." Journal of Cancer 2020; 11(20); 5953-5957. (Colonoscopy was associated with a 52% reduction in the incidence of CRC and a 62% reduction in mortality.)

By Anita Cherry 12/20/25

Two Tulips (stained glass by Anita)

Volume 1

Volume 2

Two print volumes of collected stories are now available.

Dr. Andrews-Murray: "Better is better."

Gayle

Dr. Gayle Andrews-Murray’s grandparents were Christian immigrants from Zahlé, Syria. Her grandmother was pregnant and had two toddlers with her when she boarded a ship heading to Vancouver to be with her family. She left a daughter in Syria to be cared for by her grandparents; the plan was to send for her later. Sadly, her grandmother’s two young boys and the baby (also male) died during the long and difficult voyage across several oceans and were buried at sea. While in British Columbia, she had four more children, all girls. 

Gayle’s grandmother died young, possibly from a gynecologic cancer, and six months after her passing, her grandfather died suddenly while running for a bus. The four girls were now orphans. They were sent to live with an uncle and his son. When old enough, one of the girls, destined to be Gayle’s future mother, joined the Canadian Air Force. 

The young girl was in El Paso visiting a friend from her military experience when she went on a blind date with a soldier from Fort Bliss. Wasting no time, the two were married two weeks later. They were together for fifty years before Gayle’s mother passed away with ovarian cancer. Her father (as of 2025) is 97 and is stubbornly still living by himself in Las Cruces, New Mexico; Gayle and her husband, Dr. Richard Murray, visit him often. While there, they sometimes enjoy a hike in the mountains.

Organ Mountains, Las Cruces, New Mexico (Credit: Loree Johnson)

(Her father lied about his age when he joined the Army at 17, and fought in Japan and twice in Korea, so Gayle is not quite sure how old he really is.)

Gayle’s father came from a family of twelve, nearly all boys. They lived on a farm in Oklahoma. Life wasn't easy. His mother had married at thirteen and had her first child at sixteen. Her first husband died in the 1918 flu pandemic, the second died in a tractor accident, and the third became Gayle’s paternal grandfather. 

Growing up in Texas, Gayle (she now knows) was a so-called FLK, the pediatrician’s affectionate acronym for a funny-looking kid, a child whose physical appearance suggests genetic health issues. Gayle had, in her words, “skinny, flat, and long feet,” and it was difficult for her mother to find shoes that fit her daughter properly. And, as a child, “the girl with the skinny legs” was often sickly and anemic. There was no medical explanation for this at the time, and satisfying answers wouldn’t be found until many years later (as we will see). Nonetheless, she had to adapt, to cope, without knowing why she had so many physical problems. She said that she read “the encyclopedias” in her search for answers and that this quest fueled her academic interests.

(Days after the interview, as I was “in the flow” listening intently to the recording, I was interrupted by a text from Gayle. Deeply absorbed in the engaging activity, I did not want to stop, but I paused to read the message. It turned out that the little girl who was left behind in Syria became a Catholic nun. She petitioned the Pope to allow her to travel to Canada and the U.S. to meet the family she never had the chance to know. Her petition was granted, and while here, she stayed with Gayle’s family for six weeks. After this, the family received letters from her–handwritten in Arabic and translated first into French and then English–for some years.)

Back to Gayle’s story. In college, she walked into a ballet class. It looked interesting, but it was full. The teacher asked her to jump as high as she could. She did that and showed her flexibility. The teacher quickly said, “Okay, you’re in.” Gayle said that, in her mind, she was just “extremely limber.”

When she was the first in her family to graduate from college, she wanted, she said, “to help people,” but she wasn’t sure what she would do to accomplish that. She had not actively thought about going into medicine until a medical school opened in Ciudad Juárez just across the Rio Grande in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. Hearing about this, Gayle innocently thought to herself: “Huh! Maybe I’ll do that!”

Ciudad Juárez (Credit: world wonders)

So she went to the Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juárez and learned human anatomy and physiology and other subjects–in Spanish. She enjoyed studying there for a year and a half before she decided to transfer to an American school for her medical degree--in English. 

So she applied to several U.S. medical schools. She was accepted to Chicago Medical School, but she felt that she “couldn’t do” the windy, cold weather of the Upper Midwest after having been adapted to the hot desert of El Paso. When she got into Medical College of Pennsylvania (MCP)--formerly Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania until becoming co-ed in 1970, when it first accepted a few men–she thought: “Maybe I could do Philly.”

MCP (founded by Quaker men in 1850 as the first medical school in the world for women) it would be. By the time Dr. Andrews-Murray graduated four years later (in 1983), the gender split at the school was 60/40 in favor of women. When it was time to pick a residency, she chose to stay at the college. It turned out to be a good decision. You see, as an intern in the internal medicine program, one of her supervising residents was Dr. Richard Murray. He had been dating her girlfriend, and when she left MCP after graduation, Gayle, in her words, “moved in.” (Rich, as we have seen in a previous story in the series, remembers things differently.)

MCP class of 1891 (Credit: vintage everyday)

After MCP, Rich went to the University of Maryland for his fellowship training in Pulmonary and Critical Care. By then, he and Gayle were engaged, so she joined him there. While she was in medical school, she had been greatly influenced by the renowned diagnostician and endocrinologist at MCP and the Philadelphia VA, Dr. Francis Sterling (1934-2015).  Partly as a result ot this, Gayle decided to do a fellowship in Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism under Dr. Thomas Connor in Baltimore.

During her training, she met endocrinologist Dr. Francine Camitta. Dr. Camitta had also been a Fellow at the University of Maryland with Dr. Connor and was practicing in York. She often came back to Baltimore to present interesting cases to her former (and, as we will learn, future) colleagues. 

While Gayle and Rich were in Baltimore, “two boys came along,” she said. But having children did not come easily. Early on in the marriage, when conception did not happen, she saw a fertility specialist. She was diagnosed with extensive endometriosis; seven hours of delicate surgery allowed her to conceive. But with the first pregnancy, she had pre-term labor and was in the hospital for two months. She spent a week in the hospital waiting for her second son, but only needed medication to successfully carry the third. 

While doing her three-year fellowship and raising two sons, Rich was in private practice and an attending physician at the university in downtown Baltimore. The family moved from an apartment outside the beltway to the city near the old Memorial Stadium. But as the neighborhood became progressively more dangerous, Gayle knew they had to move. 

Memorial Stadium (Credit: Historic American Buildings Survey)

Dr. Camitta offered Gayle the option of practicing with her in (much safer) York. Gayle liked the idea and convinced her husband to consider leaving Baltimore and heading north. After a bit of coaxing, he agreed and joined the staff at York Hospital to develop a Critical Care program. He was very busy, had no real coverage, and, according to Gayle, “worked hard all the time.”   

(Many times, sitting across from Gayle as she told me her story, the connection was easy and open, and I momentarily forgot that she was a doctor.)

Frannie and Gayle were able to do private practice endocrinology and diabetes medicine together for a while, but as it became “harder to pay the bills” (without a lucrative “procedure” to supplement the office fees), they joined the nascent WellSpan Medical Group as the first subspecialty practice under contract. (The hospital needed to have an endocrinologist on staff to have an accredited Internal Medicine residency.).  

Dr. John Bobin

In time, Gayle’s third son came along, and she took time off for a few years to attend to her young family. When she returned to practice, she wanted to be able to work part-time with endocrinologist Dr. Bruce Williams (Frannie had retired by then), but there was no part-time position available.  What would she do? She was relieved when Dr. John Bobin offered her work with his primary practice internal medicine group (with Dr. Leon Gibble and Dr. Chris Due). She could work part-time as a general internist, she said, and “do endocrinology on the side.” Dr. Bobin was, in her words, “a great mentor” as she delved into doing primary care for the first time. 

After Dr. Bobin left the practice for a fellowship in cardiology, Gayle moved on. By then, she was able to go part-time with WellSpan, mostly taking care of complex patients with diabetes.   

She took a hiatus from practice in 2006 when there were twelve surgeries in the family. Dr. Andrews-Murray said she used this time “to take care of everybody” and herself.  When she was ready to return to medical practice, Dr. Oscar Murillo, who had formed a multispecialty group in Hanover, recruited her to be their endocrinologist. He was “a wonderful mentor and wonderful to all his patients,” said Gayle. 

And by this time in her career, Gayle had developed an interest in reversing or even preventing diabetes rather than treating the late (and mostly unfixable) complications. She said that studies were being reported showing that early treatment with comprehensive lifestyle changes and substantial weight loss could allow the metabolic disorder to regress or disappear altogether. 

Dr. Oscar Murillo

Dr. Andrews-Murray was able to obtain a grant from a pharmaceutical company to enroll suitable patients in a program to attempt just that. Working in this “metabolic wellness center,” as she called it, she was assisted by a capable Ph.D. Nurse Practitioner. Gayle greatly enjoyed this and said that it was the most fulfilling time for her. All of the patients were motivated employees of the (self-insured) Hanover Hospital Group, and the team was often successful in getting patients to change their eating patterns and lose ten percent or more of their body weight. With this, their lab numbers and their overall health improved. Gayle did this for three years, but the program closed when the grant money dried up. 

As an example of the approach to promoting healthy habits through understanding, Gayle pointed out that “a carb is not a carb.” There are simple and complex carbohydrates, and the metabolic effects of each are different and vary according to what they are eaten with, what time of day they are consumed, and what you do after eating. 

The glycemic index (introduced in 1981 and rating the effects of carbohydrates on a scale from 0 to 100) is a measurement of how quickly blood glucose rises after a specific food is eaten. If the index is high, the blood sugar rises very quickly. This is met by a vigorous outpouring of insulin from the pancreas to bring the (damaging) excessive glucose down and store it (for later use). But the blood glucose can then fall too low, resulting in counter-regulatory hormone release (including cortisol and adrenaline) with intense hunger (for more carbs) and fatigue about two hours after the meal. More carbohydrates are consumed, and the cycle continues. 

To avoid the harmful spikes in blood glucose and high levels of insulin that follow a carb-laden breakfast, and that contribute to the development of insulin resistance leading to (among other maladies) diabetes, the metabolic syndrome, fatty liver, and cardiovascular disease. Dr. Andrews-Murray firmly recommends a routine of “no carbs before noon.” And she told me (hang on…) that “cold cereal in the morning is the worst time and the worst food you can eat.”  If you must have it, she said, “eat it at lunch or dinner,” (when the body deals with nutrients differently, in accordance with the intrinsic circadian rhythm characteristic of all life on Earth).

 Idealized blood glucose curves for foods with
different glycemic indices (Credit: marleydrug.com)

And always choose minimally processed cereals made with whole grains and with little or no added sugar. Pairing the carbs with protein or fat can also even out the rise in glucose. Healthy eating should become a positive habit, a routine — ideally, one started in early childhood. But Dr. Andrews-Murray noted that, as a beginning, simply changing a patient’s breakfast regimen can result in clinically meaningful weight loss. As she says, “better is better.” 

(Taking a walk or doing a few squats or calf-raises, or going to the gym after a good breakfast, also helps smooth out unhelpful metabolic fluctuations.)

As Dr. Andrews-Murray took care of patients in Dr. Murillo’s clinic in Hanover, everybody in the small cohesive group (all of the patients were employees of the hospital) had “a  wonderful time.” She was, noted her husband, “excited” about how well her patients were doing. But after the grant money ran out and the hospital was acquired by UPMC (the huge healthcare system based in Pittsburgh), Dr. Andrews, she said, “had to move on.” Reflecting, she felt that this project was the “apex” of her career in medicine. 

So Gayle retired from practice in 2017. And in 2025, eight years later, her careful scientific approach to treating and maybe preventing diabetes and its complications has become mainstream. She noted that it was even discussed on "60 Minutes" (in October) when Dr. Peter Attia, best-selling author of Outlive, was interviewed about his comprehensive program for preventing or delaying many of the infirmities of old age. 

Dr. Andrews-Murray lamented that many of the antidiabetic medicines she prescribed for her patients had troublesome side effects and did nothing to reverse the disease. She said that drugs like Ozempic (FDA-approved for type 2 diabetes in December 2017) are “very, very effective” and she would have “loved to have been able to use them” in her wellness clinic. 

However, she has some concerns about the adverse effects of these engineered long-lasting GLP-1 receptor agonists that control appetite and digestion artificially. Some patients may experience nausea and vomiting with delayed emptying of the stomach. There may be significant muscle and bone loss, and there is the risk of nutritional deficiencies. Rarely, some patients have had dangerous inflammation of the pancreas or ischemic optic neuropathy with potential blindness. And since there are GLP-1 receptors in the reward center of the brain, along with the loss of desire to eat, there is less enjoyment of food.  

As noted above, Dr. Andrews-Murray had taken some time away from practice partly for her own health issues. As she was seeing Dr. Peter Rowe at the Johns Hopkins Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) Clinic, and (among other things) showed him that she could touch her thumb to her forearm, he definitively diagnosed her as being on the hypermobility syndrome spectrum. Her findings were subtle and were easily overlooked by physicians for years (not uncommon in this hereditary but variable condition). 

Classic simple example of hypermobility
(Credit Franklin Cardiovascular Associates, PA)

The validation that her many physical complaints through the years could be understood as due to a named disease and were not, as some claimed, just in her head, and the result of stress, provided her with the hope that there might be treatment. And simply knowing the diagnosis was remarkably reassuring and empowering.  (EDS has been discussed in Dr. Mark Lavallee’s story earlier in this series about doctors, and this is worth reading.) 

So, many of the problems Gayle has dealt with, including the allergy-like mast cell activation syndrome, inflammatory rheumatoid arthritis, the anemia and neuropathy of B12 deficiency, an underactive thyroid, areas of hair loss, and maybe even the extensive endometriosis that resulted in infertility, can be traced to her faulty hereditary disorder of connective tissue. 

Though she was often tired of going to doctors in the past, and missed many visits, she is on top of things now and has willingly gone for screening tests to identify small problems (such as minor aneurysms) before they become big ones.

But EDS and its complications would not be the only health issues Dr. Andrews-Murray has had to endure. After she and her pulmonary specialist husband attended a medical meeting and sat around a table with his weary colleagues, everyone (are you ready for this?) developed COVID-19. Everyone. She responded to Paxlovid at first, but relapsed and was even sicker. She then developed a post-COVID syndrome (sometimes called long COVID) with prolonged cognitive and speech trouble. And fatigue. (The precise cause--or causes--of this remain unknown, but autoimmunity is suspected to play a major role.) 

Gayle needed eight months of cognitive therapy and physical therapy, and eventually did well. But she still copes with intermittent brain fog and mental fatigue. And when she had a second bout of COVID after flying out west to see her father, her rheumatoid arthritis flared up. 

On a lighter note, Gayle’s three sons, without specific encouragement from Gayle or Rich, chose to go into medicine. One of them is in a serious relationship with a woman physician. So, at some point in the future, there might be six doctors in the family. Maybe even more. Who knows? 

To close, an interesting connection across time and space:

One of Gayle’s close colleagues when she was with WellSpan was Dr. Rita El-Hajj. Rita is from Beirut and now practices endocrinology in Wynnwood, just outside of Philly. Her parents were visiting from Lebanon, and Gayle and Rich were invited to meet them. They said they were from Zahlé — the very same city where Gayle’s ancestors had lived when it was still part of Syria. Rita’s parents knew Gayle’s family and told her there was a statue of Gayle’s great-great-grandfather there — he was a doctor. 

Suggested Readings:

1. Attia, Peter M.D., with Bill Gifford. Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity. New York: Random House, 2023. (An in-depth plea and detailed outline for what he calls Medicine 3.0, the idea that chronic illness can and should be prevented rather than treated. A big book of 470 pages, but worthwhile reading.)

2. Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York: Random House, 2012. (Recommended by Gayle after our interview. Quoting William James, Duhigg wrote: "Habits are what allow us to 'do a thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it...with hardly any consciousness at all.'" p. 273)

3. Hideaki Oike, Katsutaka Oishi, and Masuko Kobori. "Nutrients, Clock Genes, and Chrononutrition. "Curr Nutr Rep (2014) 3:204–212. ("Because the circadian system organizes whole energy homeostasis, including food intake, fat accumulation, and caloric expenditure, the disruption of circadian clocks leads to metabolic disorders." p. 204)

  

By Anita Cherry 11/14/25

"POTS" by Anita, charcoal on paper, Baltimore, 1983

                                             

Volume 1

Volume 2

Two printed volumes of collected stories are available.