1994 Excitement

Past Travels

At the moment, I am between a busy travel schedule and the next busy travel schedule. So I thought I would bring you the reader up to date on the past 11 years of exciting business travel. I apologize if some of the dates are out of sequence. I will admit I am no fact checker. My mind is fairly accurate, although in some cases I have either changed names or simply made up names of places.

1994 - The year I graduate college.

I guess I can actually start with my Spring Break trip. My parents were nice enough to send me out to Vegas for the NAB - National Association of Broadcasters annual convention. This trade show includes displays of every broadcast related company out there. Granted this was 1994, so things like computer-based nonlinear video editing were just getting warmed up, and companies like Grass Valley, Tektronix and Sony were still pushing edit controllers, component switchers and so-called black boxes - $50,000+ dishwasher sized machines with one function, such as character generator or digital video effects unit.

Anyway, it was fascinating to see all this gear, especially since I was at that time anticipating a career in the field. I was lucky enough to be traveling with my mentor, Mike Martin, the then TV studio technician at UHA, who taught me all the technical mumbo jumbo such as setting up a remote video studio, how to read a waveform and vector scope, and how to operate a composite video switcher and DVE. My roommate was the guy who ran the cable studio in Pittsfield, MA. I do not remember his name, but I do remember that he snored something fierce, and brought with him a white noise generator, which was just as annoying. Staying in the other room were Mike Martin and Mike Graziano, who I believe did video work for the Massachusetts Archdiocese. At a different hotel but on some of the same social events were my boss at the time, Ric Serrenho and his wife Annalisa.

Well the night I got there, flying in from Florida where I had visited Grandma and Grandpa for the week, I arrived in town around 7pm local time. I explored my hotel Harrah’s, and immediately lost about 10 dollars in the slots. At about 8pm I met up with the gang, who informed me that they had acquired tickets to Splash!, and musical show featuring scantily clad showgirls. Sweeet! In addition to the topless conga line, they actually had a large water tank on stage in which the half-naked ladies could swim in formation. This initiation to Vegas was followed by an all you can eat buffet, which while not very good, was only $7.99.

The next day was a full day of walking the NAB floor, picking up some cool literature on new products, and actually getting some hands-on with the latest video cameras from Panasonic. That night we attended a cocktail party put on by one of the vendors my travel companions patronized. The reception I should mention, was in Liberace’s house, which apparently is rented out for these types of affairs. Having the run of the house, including the gold-fixture-appointed bathrooms was very exciting.

The rest of the trip included other meals including frogs legs at the Cajun themed lounge in Harrah’s, and the last night we visited Treasure Island (pirate show with explosions and cannon fire), Excalibur (monorail ride from Treasure Island), the new MGM Grand mammoth hotel and the coolest one of all, the pyramid shaped, xenon emitting Luxor.

The next day I flew home, borrowed my mom’s red Mazda MX-6, drove to CT for my interview at Cine-Med, got a speeding ticket on the Mass Pike, then home and eventually back to school to finish up Senior Year.

A few weeks later I got a call from Cine-Med offering me an entry level job duping tapes and going on video shoots as a production assistant. The rest is history...and here it is:

Providence Hospital. Met up with my predecessor Jim Jackson at his apartment in Middletown. We drove to Providence, where we needed to record an on-camera with Kirby Bland, and record the narration to his video “Evaluation of Conditions of the breast” or something to that effect. Jim was impressed that I was able to setup and break down the Betacam deck, camera, Teleprompter and lights, with no instruction on his part. It was about 2 months later that Jim recommended me for a promotion when he decided to leave the company. Thank Jim, by the way.

Boston - New England Deaconess Hospital. We did a video shoot documenting several pacemaker implants with Dr. Thomas Nessa. He was at the time the team doctor for the Celtics, and a specialist in all things cardiovascular. The video we were making was on the use of conscious sedation, such as Versed or Midazolam, in interventional cardiac procedures. The next week we went down to the Miami Vascular Institute to shoot some similar procedures with Barry Katzen, one of the innovators of using stents in these procedures, and a pretty famous guy in some circles. Miami was incredibly hot and humid. We actually stayed at a Marriott in Dadeland. We walked in the stifling tropical armpit to a barbecue joint, which was equally sticky. This was in the days where we shared hotel rooms (not a bad cost saving idea actually) and I remember Jim and I laughed at the fast pace of the Miami local newscast. Incidentally Dr. Nessa passed away o f aheart attack a little while later.

Another interesting shoot, my first real blood and guts experience, was to Cleveland, Ohio to the world famous Cleveland CLinic. You will notice I capitalized the L in Clinic. Over the years as my touch typing has increased to 50-60 words per minute, my use of the accidental double-capital has also increased, usually if the first word of a sentence or someone’s name has O, K or L as the second letter. Oh bother.

We were working with two surgeons. One, Dr. Jeff Milsom, who is now a well-known colorectal surgeon, was doing some sort of proctocolectomy. This was in 1994, so laparoscopic colorectal surgery had not yet been perfected, so this was your typical stem to stern incision, plus the other end too. It was here that I began to learn some medical terminology, beginning with Anastomosis, or the joining of two parts, such as the rectum and colon after removal of a malignant portion. Basically (skip to next sentence if you are eating or have ever eaten) if someone has a tumor in the colon or rectum, the offending portion is removed (these days laparoscopically), then the two remaining ends need to be put back together. While it is possible and effective to hand suture these ends together in several layers of running sutures, the more common approach is to secure an anvil into one end, then pass the stapler throught he anus either into the rectum or directly into the colon or small bowel and make a new connection, similar to joining two garden hoses.

The other procedure with Dr. Novick was a partial nephrectomy, or partial kidney removal, also for a cyst or cancer, not sure which. It was in this procedure that I saw Argon Enhanced Coagulation. Most people are somewhat familiar with electro cautery, or electro surgery, which uses electric current to dessicate or vaporize tissue during surgery. Well Argon goes one step further, Argon gas is used to propagate the electrical energy, which looks like a lightsaber, but is only about 1-2cm in length. Very cool if you ever see it. Very effective to coagulate bleeding in very vascular organs such as the liver or kidney. Less effective in fighting Sith Lords.

Cleveland gets kind of a bad rap. Each time I have visited, I always seemed to have the same routing. Fly into Hopkins airport, drive directly to the Cleveland CLinic guesthouse, eat at the New York style deli in the hotel, go to the Flats for dinner, have a crappy TGI Fridays or Houlihans meal, and wonder what else there is to do in Cleveland. The Flats are a revitalized warehouse area, like most cities added to their decrepit industrial areas in the late 1970's (see Omaha, Oklahoma City, Dallas). In the opening number of the Drew Carey show Drew and company are dancing to “Cleveland Rocks” on the boardwalk down on the Flats.

The other times I did this routing was in 1998 for a nursing video shoot, and also in 1998 to film a Shouldice Hernia Repair. In World War II, Canadian men were lining up by the thousands to enlist in the army, but many of these men had inguinal hernias. This was in the days before implantable polypropylene mesh, so most hernias were tissue to tissue repairs. Dr. Shouldice devised this simple, multi-layer repair, which created a strong repair, and allowed many men to join the military, and no doubt go off and die for the freedom of humanity. Thanks guys. In this day of laparoscopic extraperitoneal hernia repairs, no too many people are doing these tissue repairs, but it is still a popular procedure with some surgeons. Incidentally, when we visited the Canadian War Memorial on the coast of France, no doubt there were some brave men with repaired herniae buried nearby.

The final visit to Cleveland was in 2001 for yet another high-tech procedure. This was a Laparoscopic RF Ablation of Liver Metastases with Dr. Siperstein. In other words, let’s say someone has cancer of the colon, prostate or lung, and they get metastases or spread of the disease to the liver, the usual approach would be to remove the affected chunk of liver. Now granted liver tissue can regenerate itself, but it is still something you want to avoid, removing chunks of organs. So some genius came up with RF ablation. Basically, a metal probe, under ultrasound guidance, is passed into the center of the mass. Then tines are expanded from this wire, out in a radial pattern, to extend beyond the borders of the mass. Then RF energy is transmitted into the probes, and the energy cuts off the blood supply to the mass and a margin around it. A laptop computer attached to the RF dookicky monitors the temperature of each tine to make sure adequate ablation occurs. So the malignancy is killed from the inside out, without major resections or a big abdominal incision. Pretty cool.

Ok, back to 1994. Another interesting project was something called Ocean of Symmetry. This was a 3-part video series on treatment of immune disorders. The first volume described the functioning of the immune system. The second volume dealt with how antibody drugs work in the immune system, and the third volume actually discussed specific diseases such as the dreaded Takayasu's Disease and their treatments using drugs called IVIG - Intravenous Immunoglobulins. Very high level stuff. The theme for the video was that the immune system works much like the oceans, with many systems interacting and feeding off one another. We intended for the doctor who authored the content to be the on-camera host, walking on the beach, narrating the video. Easier said than done. This doctor worked at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Jersey. So we trekked out to Sandy Hook, an old missile range turned public beach, to do the setups. Problem was, there were heavy winds, and no way in hell to get the shots. So we got some beauty shots, and then high-tailed it back to CT to start editing.
Later that month we hired a proper actor to be the host/narrator, and filmed him on a beach in Fairfield. He used an earpiece to listen to and read his lines, as he walked casually along the beach, quite a distance from the camera. It was still pretty windy, but it worked well with a wireless mic. We then recorded the rest of his audio in the car, and sent him on his way. The video included tons of animation, and came out pretty well after many weeks of tweaking.

I should mention that for one scene we needed to show the injection of drugs IM or intramuscularly, which is often done in the buttocks. My colleague Clem took one for the team, and allowed his buttocks to be injected with saline from a mighty big needle. Good job.

Well that is just about it for 1994. Oh one last thing. We also were making a fund-raising video for New Milford Hospital. The on-camera hosts were Skitch and Ruth Henderson. For those of you born after 1950, Skitch Henderson was the original band leader for the Tonight Show, and was conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and long-time New Milford resident. That was my first and only brush with celebrity, unless you count meeting the fat guy from Miami Vice, and that time I waited for the rental car bus with Tom Brokaw at Palm Beach International Airport. Oh, and I met Marc Summers, host of Unwrapped and Double Dare. Oh, I met that guy with the question-mark suit who advertises “free money from the government” on late night tv. Let’s not forget our brief run-in with Carol “hello Dolly” Channing at Spago in LA. If this counts, I recorded an on-camera message with Gov. John “Hot Tub Johnny” Rowland. But I digress...

Next time, the all too exciting 1995!