The Ballad of Billy The Kidney

More benefits of career change: the case of Charlie Chaplin

As I've intimated in earlier posts, sometimes having to change careers for health reasons can bring unexpected bonuses.

In previous posts I have written about the fun of student excursions.  (And lest the teachers out there laugh hollowly, let me explain that I am an adult educator; this makes all the difference in student conduct when we're out.)

These field trips have or are about to take me (oh - and my students) to:

• 2 of the "big 4" accounting firms in Sydney - Deloitte and KPMG
• The Australian Broadcasting Corporation's operations centre in Sydney
• Local government offices in the outer Sydney districts of Camden and Campbelltown
• Parliament House, Sydney - including a guest symposium for my students with the Hon. David Campbell, Minister for Transport in the Government of New South Wales
• The State Library of New South Wales
• The Sydney Opera House

Another bonus comes when a student seeks help in a topic which happens to really grab your inrerest.  One such student came to me recently seeking ways to locate video material on Sir Charles (Charlie) Chaplin (1889 - 1977).

Without taking over from the student, I suggested several ways that the student might locate such material.  I then ran off and looked up YouTube myself.

My results follow.

• The image of Chaplin is from the blog Biblioteca Teologica.

The Gift

Brace yourself, folks.  In its ongoing quest to regain its lost ratings crown, and in its ongoing ratings war of attrition with the 7 Network, the 9 television network in about to re-launch the reality series The Gift.

Neale Prior, writing in The West Australian, sums the situation up neatly by writing:

The Nine Network has had more than its share of reality TV flops of late, so it is probably a good thing that it is transplanting a proven performer back into its schedule.

To its credit, the one previous series of this program is credited with a 40% increase in organ donor registrations in Australia - off an admittedly low base figure, given that Australia has one of the worst figures in the Western world for organ donations.

Anything that raises this figure cannot be a bad thing.  So I will watch next Wednesday's episode and report back.

• The Gift is currently scheduled at 9pm on Wednesday nights on 9 and affiliate stations.

• Thinking of making your donor intentions known? In Australia, you can register for organ donation at the Australian Organ Donor Registry.  Elsewhere, discuss this with your family medical practitioner or (in many countries) your driver-licencing authority.

• Wherever you are, discuss your wishes closely with your next of kin and clearly make your wishes known.
  

Leaving your old life behind: the case of Michael J Fox

Today's Weekend Australian newspaper publishes an extract from Michael J Fox's book Always looking up.  (See also book icon to the right of this page.)

In this extract, Mr Fox talks about walking away from his former profession of acting in response to his dealing with Parkinson's Disease.

In fairness to Mr Fox, perhaps the excerpt was not clearly contextualised properly.  And I hasten to add that I have not read the whole book yet.

But in the excerpt he goes on a bit about "walking away" from his old profession of acting in a manner (in my humble opinion) of suggesting totally abandoning all that he might have elarned from that career.

...my resolution was to leave behind everything that I had resolved to achieve, acquire, and accumulate over the last twenty years.  I knew I wouldn't just be leaving the show [Spin City] - I would be putting aside my life as an actor.  While I always had difficulty thinking of myself as an artist, I took pride in being a craftsman.  I think I understood that even though, officially, my retirement was from Spin City and not my career as a whole, I couldn't just tweak the schedule or the working conditions and expect to take on another leading role in a television series or film.  That was it.  I was essentially pulling the plug.

I believe that people shouldn't be thinking of terms of turning their back on their old lives when they have to abandon an old career due to medical circumstances - such as illness leading up to a transplant.

Sometimes people can hang on to their "old" lives too much - as I believe might possibly have been the case with Jonah Lomu.

But there are skills and aspects of your "old" life that you should hang on to and seek to develop in your "new" life.  No sense hiding this under a bushel!  (This is what I try to get across to my mature-age students making a career change.)

You have a lot of skills and aptitudes that you continue to carry about in your head - even after you've left your old career.

I dunno - am I being unfair to Michael J Fox?

• The picture of Michael J Fox is from Celebrity Values

• John's disclaimer regarding commentary on health issues

Perceptions, hair driers, and TV drama

Recently a citation appeared on the indexing service PubMed concerning an abstract for the folowing journal article:

Quick BL. Coverage of the organ donation process on Grey's Anatomy: the story of Denny Duquette. Clin Transplant 2008 DOI: 10.1111/j.1399-0012.2008.00937.x (c) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

The journal article concerns two popular myths concerning organ transplantation as portrayed in popular culture:

• The purchase myth:  "the rich and famous can buy their way to the top of organ waiting lists"

• The relationship myth:  "friends and family of medical professionals receive organ transplants quicker than other individuals"

The abstract states, interestingly, that the research detailed in this journal  article indicated that regular viewers of Grey's Anatomy are in fact less likely  to fall for these myths than those who do not watch this program.

It is true that from time to time I meet people who have fallen for other transplantation myths.  In my previous career I had one workmate who regularly peddled a particularly untrue and pernicious myth.

I have also in the past been critical of programs like Grey's Anatomy for peddling myths in portrayals of organ transplantation.  But maybe I now have to eat my words.

Maybe some scriptwriters are recognising a public education role after all.

But I am still dismayed of programs that:

• Show transplant recipients (and kidney transplant donors) bouncing around the next day as though they have had an ingrown toenail removed. (And I've seen this one on the Australian TV medical drama All Saints - a long time ago when they still actually had an opening credit sequence.)

• Show dialysis patients suffering no greater side-effects than one would receive from using a hair-drier

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• Resume of Dr Brian Quick, author of the article under discussion [PDF version] [HTML version via Google]

• The picture at the top of this post is from Sci Fi forums on sci.fi.com .

Great figures in transplant / non-transplant history: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was a famous composer and performer of Salzburg (later within Austria).

He is included in this series because kidney failure is one of the many rumoured causes of his death.  I don't know which story is correct, but hey!  variety is the spice of life when it comes to this series.

Selected links on the life, times and works of W A Mozart include the following.

lastFM: music of W A Mozart
Includes a range of .WAV files of Mozart's music (although they sound a wee bit Mr Whippy -ish)

The Mozart Forum
The stated aim of the Mozart Forum is "... to improve the intelligent discussion and discourse of Mozart and his world as found on the Internet."

OperaGlass: Mozart
A Stanford University website with a comprehensive list of his compositions and associated links.

W A Mozart
An anonymous and dormant site with a nonetheless-useful list of Mozart-related material on the WWW.

Requiem Mass in D minor:  Wikipedia article

The Mozart Project
 Not regularly updated, but containing useful links.

Wolfgand Amadeus Mozart:  Wikipedia article

Hatzinger M, Häcker A, Langbein S, Bross S, Honeck P, Alken P.:  Urologe A. 2007 Feb;46(2):172.
[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A urological pathography] [Article in German]

Article abstract cited in PubMed

:

• This YouTube video of an excerpt from the film Amadeus [1984] was uploaded by crazyman4985.  It requires a high-speed internet connection to view. Some servers automatically block YouTube.
  • The caricature of Mozart is from a blog on the website of LastFM.
    

Great figures in Transplant / Non-Transplant History: Alfred Hitchcock

This episode of Great Figures In Transplant / Non-Transplant History presents us with a man who needs little introduction – Sir Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980). 

He was a British / American film director, noted for his use of tension and darkness in the 66 films he directed from 1922 to 1976.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock appears here because of the manner of his passing, due to kidney failure.  The immeasurably cheery site findadeath.com suggests that this popped at the very end of his life whils his general health was also failing (as can happen).

Certainly he had a bit of a weight problem throughout his life, and weight issues do not exactly assist the kidneys in their work.

But at least Hitchcock had a sense of humour about this, as is illustrated in the following “directorial cameo”.

As you probably know, one of Hitchcock’s trademarks was to make a cameo appearance in each of his films as an extra – sitting at a bar, standing in a queue, sitting at a dinner table, that sort of thing.

The action in the film Lifeboat (1944) took place entirely on board a lifeboat cast off from a sunken ship.

How could Hitchcock do the cameo thing in such a tiny setting?

According to the Internet Movie DataBase, he placed his picture in a newspaper advertisement for weight loss that floated among some debris around the boat.

Hitchcock had happened to have lost a considerable amount of weight from dieting around that time, so he was seen in both the "Before" and the "After" pictures.

• The above YouTube clip placed by tessi2000 is a compilation of Hitchcock's cameo appearances in his own films.

The jolly site findadeath.com talks in a non-cited way about Hitchcock's celebrated comment, "Actors are cattle." This stirred up a great deal of protest. So the master allegedly issued a correction; "I have been misquoted. What I really said is: Actors should be treated as cattle."

There is a huge amount of material on the WWW concerning Hitchcock.   I can but hope to bring you a selection of the most notable and least rubbishy matrial that I can locate.

• This YouTube clip placed by slightstrider shows Hitchcock introducing his film Psycho in a movie trailer.

• Wikipedia article
• Listing on the Internet Movie DataBase.
• ScreenOnline > Sir Alfred Hitchcock
• Buttercups and Ravenwood [blog] > Alfred Hitchcock cheat sheet
• The Alfred Hitchcock wiki
• How to turn your boring movie into a Hitchcock thriller
• Hitchcock Online
• Alfred Hitchcock - The Master of Suspense
• findadeath.com > Alfred Hitchcock (READER ADVISORY:  I almost didn't put this one on because its a bit vague on its sources and in my view its a wee bit morbid, so I ask readers to view this with a grain of salt.)
• YouTube > The corpse scene from Psycho (VIEWER ADVISORY: Views of apprehended violence and one bloodied corpse)

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• The image at the top of this post is from the blog Buttercups and Ravenwood

Great figures in Transplant / Non-transplant History: John Bunny

May I introduce John Bunny (1863-1915) - acknowledged as the first American comedy actor in silent films, and the next in this fortnightly series.

A native of New York City, Bunny gained his show business experience in a minstrel show and in vaudeville before entering the movie business.

In a short film career of 6 years to 1915, he made a considerable name as a comedic actor.  He is acknowledged as the first comedy actor of the American screen. 

He made 260 shorts with Flora Finch between 1910 and 1915, which were known as 'Bunnygraphs', 'Bunnyfinches', and 'Bunnyfinchgraphs.'

John Bunny died in 1915 at the peak of his career, from Bright's Disease - the old name for glomerulo-nephritis. As with earlier figures in this series, this was long before medical technology had given us dialysis and transplantation.

By the way, I recognise that the 3 people in this series had all lived before dialysis and transplantation.  i do not wish to make my readers glum, so please be assured that in the next few fortnights i will be including peopel who have lived full lives and made useful contributions to humankind thanks to this technology.

Items on the web documenting John Bunny include:

• The above item is the film Troublesome Secretaries (1911), posted by bayougrande on YouTube (high-speed connection required to view video).
• Wikipedia article on John Bunny
• Internet Movie DataBase entry on John Bunny
• allmovie article on John Bunny
• Obituary in Variety magazine, 30th April 1915 (transcription on the website of Michael Carl O'Neill)
• John Bunny > Film's first king of comedy (fan site built by Tony Susnick)

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• The picture at the top of this page is from Silent Ladies & Gents.
• Would you like to suggest a famous person for this series?

Australia!

Now and again I stray of topic.  Not to be encouraged, but I do it infrequently and only when its worth it.  This is one such time.

There is about to appear a very good range of ads promoting Australia [high-speed connection required], directed by Baz Luhrmann.

Baz is, of course, famous for such films as Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Moulin Rouge! (2001).  He is about to release the blockbuster film Australia (December 2008).

So what better time for his ads to be released - especially starring one of the actors from the film, Crusoe Kurddal (I think! To be confirmed).

The advertisements are quite good.  I commend them to you, not least because I am a total sucker for this sort of advertising.  When the Qantas jet is sailing home over Broken Bay after the long flight from the USA, Peter Allen singing I still call Australia home over the tannoy always reduces me to blubbering embarassed man-tears.

• The image of Nicole Kidman in Australia at the top of this post is from the Herald-Sun of Melbourne, Australia.

Great figures in Transplant / Non-transplant History: Jean Harlow

The first subject in my fortnightly series Great figures in Transplant / Non-transplant History is Jean Harlow (1911-1937).

Jean Harlow was an American film actor who made 41 films between 1928 and 1937.

She is probably best remembered for her roles in The Public Enemy (1931) and Bombshell (1933).

She also appeared as an extrain a restaurant scene in City Lights (1931), a film by Charlie (Sir Charles) Chaplin.
 

The writer Graham Greene wrote a rather memorable description of Harlow's characterisations.  Quoted by The Internet Movie DataBase, he wrote that

Her technique was the gangster's technique - she toted a breast like a man totes a gun.

Jean Harlow died of end-stage renal failure (ESRD) in 1937, well before dialysis and transplant technology had been developed.  At that time, death was the usual outcome for ESRD patients due to this lack of medical and surgical technology.

Suggested websites on Jean Harlow include:

• This YouTube clip from The Public Enemy introduces Jean Harlow's character to James Cagney. It was posted by astique333 (high-speed internet connection required to view this).

• Jean Harlow: the official site
• Wikipedia article on Jean Harlow
• IMdB article on Jean Harlow
• Harlowville
• Who is Jean Harlow? : A SquidWho page prepared by Jaguar Julie

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• The picture at the top of this post is from the Jean Harlow Photo Gallery on Silent Ladies and Gents.
• Would you like to suggest a famous person for this series?

Grey's Anatomy re-writes transplant nursing protocols

Last night, Pauline & I watched the final episode of Grey's Anatomy for the current Australian season.