Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

BIRTH PAINS

by Bert Stratton

My daughter, Lucy, calls. She’s six months pregnant. This is January 2022. She says, “I don’t want to dump on you.” Then she does. She says the most recent ultrasound shows a spot on the baby’s heart. Lucy is on vacation in Mexico, and the midwife knew Lucy was on vacation, but the midwife nevertheless emailed Lucy, informing her to come in for her next ultrasound in six weeks instead of eight. That email dampened Lucy’s vacation mood. My mood (non-vacation) dampened, too. Lucy is in her late 30s. The docs are monitoring the heck out of her.

Me . . .  I had insane back pain in 2017 and got an MRI. The result: a herniated disc at L1-L2. OK, but then the doctor called me a day later and said I might have syringomyelia. What? That’s a cyst on your spinal cord that can mess with your nerves and brain. I scheduled a second MRI right away.

My insurance company called the morning of the second MRI and said the procedure would be $3900, and they weren’t sure they’d pay for it because I had just had an MRI. I said “full speed ahead.” If my brain was frying, I wanted to know now.

The second MRI came back “artifactual” — no sign of a brain problem. False positive. That’s my story, and I told Lucy. So many tests.

But I guess more tests are better than no tests.

[Cecil was born April 18. Doing well. He has a spot in my heart.]

—

I had a humorous op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday about fasting on Yom Kippur. (No paywall.)

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3 comments

1 Mark Schilling { 10.06.22 at 9:30 am }

Thanks for the happy ending. American medical care is keerayzee. If you can’t cough up the $3,900 you don’t find out about a condition that might kill you….until it’s about to kill you. Or am I overreacting?

2 Kenneth Goldberg { 10.06.22 at 10:03 am }

Just had a few tests myself and waitting for more results, so I can relate. Rachel had, for the second one, one of those pregnancies where, with maybe four or five months to go, she was told she needs to stay in the hospital the remainder of the time! However, after a few days in a hospital, she was told she could be in a home but in a bed virtually all the time. The family (three of them) “moved” to her inlaws for the remainder of the pregnancy, and she literally did stay in bed the remainder of the time (a la Sofia Loren). A few days before Thomas came, she was told she could leave and she went to a salon. Thomas was perfect!

3 Joel Feuer { 10.08.22 at 10:45 pm }

If first test says maybe problem, and 2nd test says no problem, then how do we know which test was false results? Maybe 2nd test had error?

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