Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Touring the Bedpan Alley North - by bus
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
XWe are all involved in healthcare, personally and politically. Locally, it involves thinking about local hospitals: the loss of Cabrini Health Center and Bet Israel’s becoming part of the Continuum Health Partners conglomerate, along with Roosevelt and St. Luke’s... We do live in a bedpan alley, and to see how far it extends further north, one just has to take the M15 express buss and watch the passing scenery. It is a good excursion, even for those of us who take it for health reasons, such as traveling to the East River Medical Imaging Center on 72nd Street, for MRIs, X-rays, sonograms and such.
At 14th Street, where I board the Express or Limited M15, we are in the Beth Israel territory. Starting in 1889 as a dispensary on Henry Street, it gradually moved to Stuyvesant Square. There are some key BI construction dates, in 1929 and the 1940s. . NYU’s Hospital for Joint Diseases and New York Eye and Ear (another Continuum entity, 150 years in this location, old buildings redesigned by Stanford White in 1890s) are BI's neighbors.
Moving along, we reach 23rd Street, home of the VA Hospital, frequently under threat of closing. A transfer to M23 will take you to Chelsea Peers, for fresh air, sports and river watching.
At 27th Street we have the Bellevue/NYU Medical Centers, stretching for several blocks. At 30th , visit the gallery of murals painted by Russian-American artist David Margolis in 1937-41, depicting agriculture, industry and family life. They were covered up during the war years, various attributed to using the hall for storage, but also probably because of a reaction to Diego Rivera’s frescos in Rockefeller Center, destroyed when discovered that they prominently depicted Lenin and Trotsky. Margolis (1911-2005), in the mid-1990s was able to uncover and refresh the paint on his allegoric and politically non-aggressive murals.
The 34th Street stop is good for transfers to M16 for Port Authority Bus Terminal and M34 for Javits Center. At 42nd Street stop exit to visit the United Nations, and transfer to M104 for the West Side. At 50th Street you can transfer to M27 for Port Authority, and M50 for 42nd Street Pier, and at 57th Street to M31 for Hell’s Kitchen and M57 for West End Avenue.
Our hospital tour resumes at 67/68 Streets, Memorial-Sloan Kettering, Hospital for Special Surgery and New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center on York Avenue, and Rockefeller University nearby. Sloan-Kettering started 1880s as NY Cancer Hospital by a group led by John Jacob Astor. Its present site was donated by John J. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1939. In the 1940s two General Motors executives, Alfred J. Sloan and Charles F. Kettering, funded the present institution, and in 1960 it merged with the next-door Memorial Hospital. It is the world’s oldest and largest private cancer research and treatment institution.
Next stop on the Limited brought me to 72nd Street and the East River MRI center. Magnetic Resonance Imaging first involves signing off that you do not have a pacemaker, defibrillator, brain or aneurysm metal clips, implanted coils, catheters, prostheses, joint replacements, limbs, magnetic dental implants and similar metal gadgets in your innards. Reading this, one almost begins to see bionic people as a reality. Then, dressed in a hospital gown, one slips into a shallow tray, ear plugs in place, knees raised and head secured against injuries, and glides into the big white sound barrel for 25 minutes, in my case. The resonance test, involving banging the barrel, is initially mild, like a hast heartbeat, soon overlaid by high-speed electric drill noise, with further additions that feel like the Doppler effect of a train rushing towards you. After this first series , a more regular long hammering sequence begins, finally followed by a set that feels like getting a strong shower while lying in a tin washtub, with someone drumming against the tub’s sides. These sequences were repeated several times, each after my body had been moved an inch or two forward.
There are rewards for going through the MRI torture, the main one hor me being a chance to visit Sotheby’s auction galleries’ building on 72nd and York. There is always an exhibition – currently a show of early folding maps of this continent, assembled by Charles J. Tannenbaum, a major collector. Maps are frustrating to collect, every time you show your treasures to a friend, you have to unfold and fold, which eats at their hinges. But even when Sotheby’s has no rewarding exhibition, there is their 10th Floor rooftop cafeteria, closed or open air. Get a cup of coffee, a salad or sandwich ($7) and admire the rooflines of downtown condos and a nearby impressive environmentally sound three-stage rectangular smokestack, like a modern sculpture, rising high above the city.
About the rest of the trip on the M15 Express. The remaining stops, on 79th, 86th, 96th, 105th , 116th and 120th have no direct medical sites to offer (except maybe a walk west, over to Lenox Hill at 77th Street and Mt. Sinai around 100th Street), although the end stop, 125th Street, offers an intriguing transfer to Bx15, to visit Fordham Plaza and check the exotic shopping and medical opportunities of the Bronx.
XWe are all involved in healthcare, personally and politically. Locally, it involves thinking about local hospitals: the loss of Cabrini Health Center and Bet Israel’s becoming part of the Continuum Health Partners conglomerate, along with Roosevelt and St. Luke’s... We do live in a bedpan alley, and to see how far it extends further north, one just has to take the M15 express buss and watch the passing scenery. It is a good excursion, even for those of us who take it for health reasons, such as traveling to the East River Medical Imaging Center on 72nd Street, for MRIs, X-rays, sonograms and such.
At 14th Street, where I board the Express or Limited M15, we are in the Beth Israel territory. Starting in 1889 as a dispensary on Henry Street, it gradually moved to Stuyvesant Square. There are some key BI construction dates, in 1929 and the 1940s. . NYU’s Hospital for Joint Diseases and New York Eye and Ear (another Continuum entity, 150 years in this location, old buildings redesigned by Stanford White in 1890s) are BI's neighbors.
Moving along, we reach 23rd Street, home of the VA Hospital, frequently under threat of closing. A transfer to M23 will take you to Chelsea Peers, for fresh air, sports and river watching.
At 27th Street we have the Bellevue/NYU Medical Centers, stretching for several blocks. At 30th , visit the gallery of murals painted by Russian-American artist David Margolis in 1937-41, depicting agriculture, industry and family life. They were covered up during the war years, various attributed to using the hall for storage, but also probably because of a reaction to Diego Rivera’s frescos in Rockefeller Center, destroyed when discovered that they prominently depicted Lenin and Trotsky. Margolis (1911-2005), in the mid-1990s was able to uncover and refresh the paint on his allegoric and politically non-aggressive murals.
The 34th Street stop is good for transfers to M16 for Port Authority Bus Terminal and M34 for Javits Center. At 42nd Street stop exit to visit the United Nations, and transfer to M104 for the West Side. At 50th Street you can transfer to M27 for Port Authority, and M50 for 42nd Street Pier, and at 57th Street to M31 for Hell’s Kitchen and M57 for West End Avenue.
Our hospital tour resumes at 67/68 Streets, Memorial-Sloan Kettering, Hospital for Special Surgery and New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center on York Avenue, and Rockefeller University nearby. Sloan-Kettering started 1880s as NY Cancer Hospital by a group led by John Jacob Astor. Its present site was donated by John J. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1939. In the 1940s two General Motors executives, Alfred J. Sloan and Charles F. Kettering, funded the present institution, and in 1960 it merged with the next-door Memorial Hospital. It is the world’s oldest and largest private cancer research and treatment institution.
Next stop on the Limited brought me to 72nd Street and the East River MRI center. Magnetic Resonance Imaging first involves signing off that you do not have a pacemaker, defibrillator, brain or aneurysm metal clips, implanted coils, catheters, prostheses, joint replacements, limbs, magnetic dental implants and similar metal gadgets in your innards. Reading this, one almost begins to see bionic people as a reality. Then, dressed in a hospital gown, one slips into a shallow tray, ear plugs in place, knees raised and head secured against injuries, and glides into the big white sound barrel for 25 minutes, in my case. The resonance test, involving banging the barrel, is initially mild, like a hast heartbeat, soon overlaid by high-speed electric drill noise, with further additions that feel like the Doppler effect of a train rushing towards you. After this first series , a more regular long hammering sequence begins, finally followed by a set that feels like getting a strong shower while lying in a tin washtub, with someone drumming against the tub’s sides. These sequences were repeated several times, each after my body had been moved an inch or two forward.
There are rewards for going through the MRI torture, the main one hor me being a chance to visit Sotheby’s auction galleries’ building on 72nd and York. There is always an exhibition – currently a show of early folding maps of this continent, assembled by Charles J. Tannenbaum, a major collector. Maps are frustrating to collect, every time you show your treasures to a friend, you have to unfold and fold, which eats at their hinges. But even when Sotheby’s has no rewarding exhibition, there is their 10th Floor rooftop cafeteria, closed or open air. Get a cup of coffee, a salad or sandwich ($7) and admire the rooflines of downtown condos and a nearby impressive environmentally sound three-stage rectangular smokestack, like a modern sculpture, rising high above the city.
About the rest of the trip on the M15 Express. The remaining stops, on 79th, 86th, 96th, 105th , 116th and 120th have no direct medical sites to offer (except maybe a walk west, over to Lenox Hill at 77th Street and Mt. Sinai around 100th Street), although the end stop, 125th Street, offers an intriguing transfer to Bx15, to visit Fordham Plaza and check the exotic shopping and medical opportunities of the Bronx.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 3:17 PM 
