October 4, 2022 Jochen. You stated it perfectly! I appreciate you sending this prayer. Let’s pray it works for me. Planning to stay in touch post surgery. Don Sent from my iPhone > On Oct 3, 2022, at 4:44 PM, Ernst J Meyer wrote: > >  > > Dear Donald, > > Thank you for staying in touch with me. I think of you very often. At times like these, I become acutely aware of the incapacity of language to tell you what I think and what I feel. "The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace." Jochen > On 9/28/22 17:23, Donald Strauss wrote: >> Hello Jochen: So glad to have received your latest email as I had not received your September 19 commentary. Sorry to read about your travails. what with being restricted to the second floor of your large house. Certainly, getting old is not for the faint of heart, or as the saying goes, “Getting old is not for sissies”, although (as far as we know), it beats the alternative. You prove it every day with your enthusiasm for learning and your writing skills are extraordinary, absolutely, not affected by time. >> >> My latest MRI of two days ago shows no change over the last 8 weeks, but still, surgery seems to be the way for me to proceed. I put my trust in my surgeon and G-d! At 80, if the tumor were to start growing again a few years from now, when I am older and in a worse physical condition, my recovery would be more difficult. Not that I am young, but I am hopeful that recovery will be good. I have you down on a list that Jan will use to give folks an update, post-surgery. I plan to write to you again personally soon. Don >> >>> On Sep 26, 2022, at 10:16 PM, Ernst J Meyer wrote: >>> >>> Dear Donald, >>> >>> Below is the letter I "sent" on two occasions a week ago. My computer registered that both mailings had been made, but I failed to receive the copy which I always address to myself. All my other e-mails seemed to be delivered properly.I hope this attempt is more successful. At least it gives me an opportunity once more to send you and Jan my best wishes. Jochen >>> >>> >>> September 19, 2022 >>> >>> Dear Donald, >>> >>> Thank you for your letter, and thank you especially for confiding in me the details of your recent arduous detours in the empire of physicians and surgeons. As you noted, it's a realm where I myself have spent much of my life, albeit not as a patient, but as his opposite, dare I say it, as anti-patient. Perhaps it reflects on my "technical" incompetence when I admit that I felt my real task was not to "cure" my patient but to mediate between him and the exigencies of existence. Early on, I thought I discovered that language could not serve my purpose, because unavoidably the meaning of words is largely contingent on the individual experiences of each of us. For that reason, all I will write now, is that I think of you very often with much concern and affection. >>> >>> As for myself, I am startled by the awareness of how inexorably my life is changing, while the days, indistinguishable one from the next, go by ever more rapidly. I don't remember whether I wrote you, my walking has become so precarious that for almost nine months, I haven't ventured on the stairs. I'm now confined in this spacious house to the second floor, half of which is devoted to storage. Here I sleep fitfully for ten or eleven hours each night. The remaining time I spend reading, trying to learn about topics far beyond me, such as quantum mechanics, trying to write, or toying with my collection of old computers, which now consists of five laptops and four desktops, each in various states of software or hardware disrepair. I'm reminded, how in my childhood in the backwoods of Virginia, I occupied myself with repairing radios which then still consisted of vacuum tubes, transformers, condensers and resistors linked with wire and solder. I fell behind and never learned how to use semi-conductors. >>> >>> The older I get, the more childishly inadequate I feel; and with this provocative confession, I send you and Jan my very best wishes. Jochen >>> ~ >>> >>> On 9/26/22 21:06, Donald Strauss wrote: >>>> Dear Jochen: Are you okay? Did you receive my message below? I am concerned because of your age and the fact that you usually reply to my emails very quickly. Don >>>> >>>>> On Sep 18, 2022, at 8:06 PM, Donald Strauss wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Dear Jochen: A lot has happened since I last communicated with you. As I had informed you I had learned that I had a Meningioma (brain tumor) which doctors said I probably had for years and would not grow. The tumor apparently has brought on seizures which caused my heart to stop on two occasions; each time for for 7 seconds (learned from a monitoring device I had placed on my body for over a number of days). Our local hospital then had to put a pacemaker in my chest. While doing that procedure, the surgeon nicked my lung causing it to collapse. That problem got fully repaired. Turns out, however, that the doctors were wrong and my tumor has grown 40% in 8 months. I will go in for brain surgery to have most of it removed on October 6. All our planned trips have had to be cancelled (including a planned trip to Boston where I could have visited with you). We are now in isolation fearing Covid which would cause delays to my surgery. No visits with friends, only with doctors! Since you are a doctor I can tell you that the tumor in on my right side by my ear. It had extended forward and back along my skull and down by Corordid Artery. >>>>> >>>>> That’s the latest. I hope to write again following my tough complicated surgery. Don >>>>>