Getting Old and Getting Out
In New York City
byHerb Bardavid
This is Robert Resnick
Robert, who is 87 years old, said he gets out almost every day. If the weather is bad, he will still get out and walk in the park area in front of his building at Lincoln Towers. He said he has a keen understanding of the importance of exercising because he is a physician. I asked what type of physician. He is a retired liver doctor (hepatologist.)
Robert retired from medicine in 2010 and he and his wife, with whom he lives, moved from Boston to New York City to be closer to their grandchildren. He said he still misses medicine. He knew medicine backward and forwards through 2010 but since then, has been out of touch with any new developments.
Being with his children and grandchildren provides Robert great happiness and pleasure. But not being able to practice his craft leaves a rather large hole in his daily life. Walks in New York City is something he loves to do, but one thing is quite upsetting for him. It is the way many younger people seem to ignore him. It is as if they look right through you. He said it sometimes feels as if he is being left out of what is going on. But getting out every day is something he will do as long as he can. It is a case of "Doctor, heal thyself."
I had just left my apartment with camera in hand and as I turned from 64th Street onto West End Avenue, I saw a gentleman coming out of the small grocery store in our building, with a package in his walker. He was walking slowly and I caught up with him to say hello. He smiled at me, a little surprised that I was acknowledging him. He said hello in return and I asked him (as I always do) was it difficult for him to get out today? After all, it was a cold, cloudy day, the kind of day one might stay home and pull the covers over one's head, especially if mobility was difficult.
He spent most of his life practicing at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, MA. He told me that he was instrumental in the discovery of the hepatitis C virus in 1989. We stopped walking and he went into great medical detail as to how it happened when he was operating on a woman and he discovered some abnormalities in her liver. It was in the history that he took that gave him the clue. She had a blood transfusion many years earlier and it was through her history that gave him the lead to pursue.