A Letter from Douglas Zipes

A Letter from Douglas Zipes, MD, to the APS Distinguished Physiologists, March 2019

Eighty Years is Different

Birthdays are signposts I have ignored and discarded over the past 79 years. The 80th, however, gives me pause, and seems different for several reasons. First, the duration, eighty years, makes me seem old, even though I am not. My paternal grandmother lived to her eighties, and, as kids, we all thought she was as old as Methuselah. Second, it is not a final point in time, a goal achieved; life’s a long race, not a sprint, and I’m still busy with lots of projects. It’s the journey that’s important, not an artificial finish at a specific age. (1)

That said, I do like using eighty years as an excuse. For example, when I’ve had an intellectually unproductive day--like only writing a couple of hundred words for my current novel--I can say, “After all, I’m eighty years old!” Or when I crump, short of breath, after only thirty pushups in the morning, I can wail, “What do you expect from someone eighty years old?”

Life’s journey has been exhilarating, as I expressed in my memoir, Damn the Naysayers. During my first 50+ years in medicine, I was able to combine patient care with laboratory research that, hopefully, contributed to new knowledge and clinical advances. I have faded slowly from the health scene, initially giving up my animal laboratory and then no longer seeing patients. However, I have maintained a presence on the medical stage with five current textbooks, serving as editor-in-chief of two cardiology journals (one has 67,000+ subscribers worldwide), and writing a bi-weekly health column for The Saturday Evening Post.

The difference for this part of my life is that I own my day. I wake up without an alarm clock, can meet a colleague for a 2-hour lunch in the middle of the week, go to a concert or movie on a Tuesday evening, and not develop sinus tachycardia when my cell phone rings.          

This new existence is not without sacrifices. I have transitioned from “Who’s who” to “Who’s he” as I have ventured into the very competitive world of fiction writing, or as I prefer to express it, using lies to tell the truth. My first novel, The Black Widows, about two elderly spinsters running a worldwide terrorist organization, enjoyed a modicum of success, being chosen as a finalist for best fiction in 2011 by Foreward Book Reviews.

The second novel, Ripples in Opperman’s Pond, explored genotype/phenotype mismatch in identical twin brothers with vastly different personalities. I tried using that novel to write an unforgettable opening line as in, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times;” or “Call me Ismail.” One twin says of the other, “We were identical, Dorian and I, but not at all alike.”

In the third novel, Not Just a Game, I placed a member from each of three successive generations in a single family into three memorable Olympics (1936 Berlin; 1972 Munich; 2016 Rio) against a background in which Hitler survived WWII; he lived in Argentina where he sowed seeds for the Fourth Reich that has its uprising during the 2016 Rio Olympic games. My goal was to call attention to Nazism, alive and flourishing in the 21st century.

The most recent novel, A Failure to Warn, to be published this spring, is a fictionalized depiction of my nine years testifying as an expert witness against TASER, Inc. in multiple lawsuits to persuade them to acknowledge that their electronic control weapon could kill.

Many colleagues have asked why I switched from writing science to writing fiction. I needed a new creative outlet after closing my experimental lab. I relate to the quote by Anton Chekhov, the famous Russian physician-author, who said, “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature (writing) is my mistress. When I tire of one, I spend the night with the other.”

Non-medical writing may be part of many physicians’ DNA. A long list of physician authors exists, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Oliver Wendel Holmes, W. Somerset Maugham in years past, and Oliver Sacks, Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, and Abraham Verghese more recently. I admire their successes much as an intern would admire the skills of staff physicians.

But I’m still young, and if I work hard at my writing, who knows what I can accomplish in the next eighty years? With a bit of luck, maybe I will join their list.

1) Zipes DP. The journey is more important than the finish. Heart Rhythm 2019; 16:320-322.