As a kid I thought I remembered watching a television series called “I Led Two Lives.” It was a series about a person who was a double agent: a spy and an advertising executive. When I Googled it today, though, it turned out that the show was called “I Led Three Lives,” which really screwed up this introduction because as a kid I only led two lives: Italian and English.

During the week we lived with my mother’s parents — a British/Scots-Irish couple, immigrants to the United States back in the 1600s. They were sons and daughters of the American Revolution, and the entire family was made up of Presbyterians who had converted from being Quakers. One of my grandfather’s way-back grandfathers, Jacob Beeson, founded Uniontown, Pennsylvania. My mom’s father was an engineer on the railroad, a high-paying and prestigious job. Two of my Anglo-Saxon uncles were also railroad engineers, and one was a stockbroker/business executive.

Three weeks to go

Dr. Lisa Randall, a Harvard PhD and theoretical physicist, should have been my teacher. If Lisa had been my teacher, I’m sure that I would have become a theoretical physicist. Of course, she’s from the wrong generation to have been my teacher; I’ve never met her, and have no idea what she’s like, but what if ?

There are probably several other glitches in my thinking. For example, I’m sure that Harvard was not high on the list of schools knocking down my door for undergraduate admission. Plus, having enough money to go to Harvard in the 60’s would have been unthinkable. But at least theoretically, I would have loved having her as my teacher, and hypothetically, her class would never have been on my cut list.

After having heard her being interviewed today, I was completely engaged. Learning about particle physics, supersymmetry, and cosmology from Lisa would have rocked. Even guys like Charlie Rose agree that her theories on the existence of extra dimensions have made her one of the most famous scientists in the world. She’s alsoabest-selling author of several books including: “Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe” and “Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions,” which was cited by the New York Times as mind-bending reading, a play on words, right? That book’s title was the grabber for me.

Why this sudden obsession with Lisa Randall? Besides the fact that she’s brilliant, articulate, talented, attractive, and a creative thinker, she’s introduced a theory that I just love. By means of complex math, Dr. Randall theorized that space and time could be warped. That’s right, warped. She’s saying that the universe could be warped, and my goodness, that would explain so much. She argues that our universe exists inathree-dimensional “brane” within a higher-dimensional universe. One theory is that our universe was created by two branes smashing into each other.

OK, to be clear, that’s brane, like membrane, and if you’re a Big Bang or String Theory kind of person, the mere fact that an additional brane could exist makes this all so much more interesting. I’ve always thought that there are other dimensions about which we have no knowledge, and the fact that she thinks the universe may be warped is nothing new to me.

I’m absolutely sure that my interpretation of this warped theory is in no way related to her theory, but you’ve got to admit that having suchabrilliant person determine at least in some theoretical model that the universe is warped makes all of this so much more understandable and believable. How else could we explain the fact that my 2-year-old grandson told us that he was talking to my mom who had died three years before he was born. or that Long Island Medium talking to dead uncle Adam who’s telling his wife to make sure she gets her oil changed.

There has to be something smarter than us in this universe because we’re almost completely cerebrally challenged. Heck, we’re still running around shooting each other over whose God is the better God, and they are the same God. Do you see where I’m coming from when a fourth dimensional warped brane is added to our three dimensional warped brains?

The fact that we could discover through the work of the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator that Klauza-Klein particles might be able to traverse the universe through extra dimensions is awesome. This seems out there, but wouldn’t it be great if, this Thanksgiving week, we could find a nicer, kinder, gentler and smarter dimension just next door? No matter which dimension you happen to inhabit over the next few days, have a Happy Thanksgiving, and if you can, please,“Beam me up, Scotty!”

I’ve been getting emails from my more conventional friends regarding a small inanimate object that has been upsetting them for the last few years. It’s fascinating to me that they are so distraught over what I consider to be a touch of creative genius that has generated millions of dollars, no tens of millions of dollars, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars for its creators.

Their contempt feels like it is against all good things relating to capitalism. You know, every child dreams of growing up, getting that one good idea that has never been commercialized before, and retiring to Fort Lauderdale at the age of 39 to just play around on their 120-foot yacht with that helicopter on board for short shopping trips.  

When you take the guided inter-costal waterway tour, guides will point out some $30 million mansion and say, “This is the house that’s owned by the guy who invented the scratch off lottery ticket.” and “That next 75 million dollar house on your right was built by the guy that came up with Post-it Notes.” It’s the American dream: The Pet Rock, the Chia Pet, Rubik’s Cube, the Hula Hoop, and the Slinky. No one ever seems to be upset over these items.

Of course they say that Pet Rocks are stupid, but what they mostly say is, “Gosh, I wish I had invented that.” Remember the Mood Ring, those rubber band bracelets, the Barbie doll? Like I said, it’s the American dream!  

You come up with something that’s simple, can be mass produced, is a catchy idea, can easily be manufactured in China, and is within the price range of every American, and you’ve got it made for the rest of your life.    

Okay, so the problem is when you cross old beliefs with new attitudes to get similar results. For example, you break the law and instead of being incarcerated, you get to wear an ankle bracelet and only are permitted to leave your home for church and funerals. What’s wrong with good ole prisons? (Especially a good old for-profit prison owned by Uncle Bill.)

How about this one, you go to school, you act out, and instead of going to the assistant principal’s office to be paddled, you are given a week’s detention. Remember The Breakfast Club?

I’m sure by now that most of you have figured out that I’m talking about that vigilant, 1984-ish character that lurks around the home from November until Christmas Eve, the enforcer, the seer and know it all, Columbo, the little one who will bust small children for missbehaving during this very tense time of the year, The Elf on the Shelf.

One of the protestor’s favorite sayings is that they never needed an Elf on the Shelf to behave because they always had a belt on the shelf, and that belt was available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for 365 days a year. If you didn’t obey the rules, that belt would keep you in line. It was the old beat-you-into-submission rule of child raising that they embrace.

Truthfully my dad hit me with his belt once when I was six or seven years old, and he used his hand on my backside a few times. But once I got past age seven, I grew up in a generally peaceful environment. I do remember my Italian grandmother constantly telling me that “Goda is watching you, and if you don’t takea the garbage out for you momma, you will burn ina hell.” That was a really good motivator.

So I say that the little creative genius that hangs off the cupboard door, the fireplace, or wherever you want to put him or her is amazing. When the kids are bad just say, “The elf is watching you.” 

After 30 plus in health care, it hit me that my job is exactly the same now as it was my first year of teaching: putting it all together. Actually, it started when I was just eight years old, and I entered the world of music. I learned to participate in an ensemble, a group of musicians who worked tirelessly to make the most amazing music they could possibly make.

It became clear to me a few weeks ago that the group in which I am currently serving, the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, is attempting to do exactly the same thing: put it all together.

Try to imagine, if you will, a group of musicians that just has three types of instruments: a tuba, a bassoon, and a pair of cymbals. Now that combination would make some pretty strange sounds. Then try to hear in your head a full orchestra with every instrument playing the theme from Star Wars. What a difference.  Each individual musician adds his or her amazing talent and skill to the effort to perfect the sounds they are producing.

Similarly in sports, professional football teams are not just made up of the players. There are coaches, dietitians, strength trainers, psychologists, surgeons, chiropractors, physical therapists, and even financial advisors involved in producing winning teams. Why should life changing healthcare efforts be any different?

When we are children, we are taught things that, in many cases, stay with us for life. We are corrected by our parents, teased and sometimes tortured by our siblings, and challenged unmercifully by our playmates. During this time we also learn what it takes to please our parents, our teachers and our elders.

These thoughts, actions and reactions often start out as tiny strings connected to us that continue to grow in both strength and influence in our minds into ropes that eventually become chains. These chains become steel cables that can wrap around our belief system and our self-images like metal strait jackets.

These issues often reinforce our insecurities, and throw us into meteor showers of self-doubt. They can deprive us of happiness, and sometimes they deprive us of love, but they most definitely deprive us of true health.

These beliefs often contribute to things like working ourselves to near death. Even when we realize that we need help to change, that change is incredibly difficult. The truth is that we often can’t make these changes without help, lots of help, but accepting help is also something that we’re not used to doing. So, we continue to flounder and stagger along our tortured paths.

Who can we turn to? And who has enough knowledge, information, training, and skill to help us?

Integrative medicine practices put together groups of professionals that include individuals from all areas of healthcare expertise, ranging from dietary advice, to attitude advice. Their job is simply defined: to assist you in achieving or regaining your own happiness, health, and well-being by supporting you in recapturing balance in your life.

They provide you with a menu of modalities and experts from which to choose, and you will be nurtured in body, mind, and spirit by professionals who specialize in life-changing work. It’s not about business. It’s about YOU. And it is intended to do one thing: help you find your way back to balance. It’s designed to help you by providing unconditional love while you find your way home, wherever that home may be. It will help you break away those chains and reach deep into the pools of strength that will free you to love and enjoy life.  

The challenge is that our current system is still deeply immersed in sick care. Health and wellness is not yet on their radar screens, but it’s coming to a neighborhood near you. Integrative Medicine is the future of healthcare. 

Growing up, I remember phrases from commercials like, “Who can? AmeriCAN. The American Heating and Cooling Company.” Or “800-325-3535” sung to a melody that will forever be locked in my mind.  It’s still a functional 800 number for Sheraton Hotels. How about “There’s a Parker made by Jotter with a T-Ball Tip.” Some things just never leave our memories.  They are implanted deeply in our conscious and subconscious minds. Here’s another list of memories that will never go away. “Eat some fruit or “You’re not leaving this table until you finish your vegetables.” And this one, “Go outside and play!”

These were all phrases that we Baby Boomers heard regularly as kids growing up in our “Leave It to Beaver” homes.

Seven years ago a prominent, San Francisco area based physician, Dr. Lee Lipsenthal, invited me to become a member of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine.  This was an organization made up entirely of physicians. In fact, as the only non-physician on the board, there were plenty of meetings where we simply looked or listened to each other in wonderment where they were thinking, “What is he doing here?” And my thoughts went something like, “Wow, these are brilliant people, but we’re never going to get anything done if we don’t get out of the weeds.”

That group has now grown into the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine and is an inclusive group that has representation from every modality of healers in the Integrative fields from nurses to acupuncturists and from energy workers to holistic nurses and Naturapaths. There are over 400,000 practitioners now represented in some manner in this group, and they are striving to become the world’s leader in wellness and prevention. Their primary focus is not dissimilar to the phrases above in that they are devotees of diet, exercise, stress management and group support.

The interesting thing about this collection of humanity is something that is perfectly clear to me yet still sometimes a struggle for you. You see, Lee was a guitar player, and I, of course, was a trumpet player and instrumental music director. In music school you can train to be a Diva or an ensemble player with solo capabilities.  Lee didn’t ask me to be on this board specifically because I ran hospitals. He knew that my background included directing ensembles, and that is exactly what the AIHM is supporting, ensemble medicine.

In a discussion with one of my proteomic scientists years ago, it became clear to me that he was a Diva. He had completed his PhD on one particular complex piece of analytic equipment, and every time we got together in a group, it was as if he was a hammer and the world was all nails. My favorite term for describing him was as a piccolo PhD. The piccolo sounds great in an ensemble, but we never attend solo piccolo concerts. Piccolos are best utilized in an ensemble setting.

The AIHM is moving us from individual Diva practitioners to ensembles of healers where the talents of each and every individual are brought to bear for each patient in ways that could never be singularly captured as soloists. Their work is so much richer, deeper, and more profound and beautiful as an ensemble. Each practitioner brings his or her healing capabilities to the individual patient and utilizes their discrete training and skills in concert.

Does your gut hurt? Why not have a Naturopath assist you in clearing up your candida with probiotics, herbs, and specific foods while your physician, acupuncturist, and massage therapist works on your other physical challenges to help you achieve optimal health and wellness? It just makes sense and is the first real effort to make wellness and prevention the center of our universe.

Take a step back and listen to the music from a team of incredible professionals working together to help you.

It’s all relative My headset, those little white earbuds for my iPhone, is lost. OK, maybe lost is too strong; it’s misplaced. My personal form-fitting earbuds, those high tech pieces of plastic that bring audio pleasures to my grey matter are missing. They could be in a jacket, suit, or sport coat pocket, or they could even be neatly wedged between the pillows on the couch or on the floor underneath the front seat of my car. Let’s put it this way. As soon as I buy another set, I’m sure that I’ll find them.

That’s called the theory of relatively. Once you pay out the cash for two earbuds connected to some 13-cent wire, the originals will show up. You can bet on that just as sure as that you’ll be slipping on ice and falling on your butt in Pennsylvania by December. This is where the relativity part comes in; because once you buy another set, you’ll find the old set, and feel relatively stupid.

Let’s add a couple more layers of stupid to that list by shopping for a new set. It seemed like a good idea to pick up a spare pair just in case, and since there are airport specialty shops that deal in electronics, my first, worst instinct was to look around there. Of course it was no surprise to see those magnificent Bose earphones that cancel out all known sound on earth and take you to places that, before you put them on, existed only in some audiophile’s mind. These gems can cost around $300.

Today’s surprise, however, came from the three other displays of hundreds and hundreds of earbuds that cost that much, too. What could possibly be in those little finger-tip-sized pieces of plastic that cost that much? What could be that amazing, that magnificent, that expensive, and that valuable? Did they have titanium base wires powered by little tiny Tesla electric engines with gold dust blown into acoustically modified speakers? Are they hand crafted from the teeth of ancient mammals, or did someone make them from your own very personalized and altered DNA? Is it possible that the folks who make those hearing aids that are wired directly to your auditory sensors through your skull are now in the music business? Could the engineers who designed the Hubble telescope and the Moon Rover now be playing inside your ear canals as well? It seemed incomprehensible that something so small, so plastic, so vulnerable to being misplaced could cost that much. It felt almost sinful that, while people are homeless and hungry, my fellow business travelers might have the equivalent of Audi or Lexus earbuds shoved in those two little ear openings. How, in a world filled with suffering and pain could such extravagance exist?

That was a redundant question because right in front of my eyes, I saw a set of ear buds that cost more than $1,000, sound isolating earphones with quad high definition micro-drivers and a true subwoofer. That’s when my brain flashed back toaconsultant in 1991 who sat at my conference table with a Mont Blanc fountain pen, Mont Blanc flair tip, Mont Blanc highlighter, and Mont Blanc mechanical pencil, those fancy plastic writing tools that cost collectively over $1,000, stuffed in his pocket. It made me grasp tightly to my Bic.

It’s kind of sad that we, as human beings, desperately try to prove our value to ourselves, our peers, and our families through material things. I’ve always admired those strong folks who are so confident and secure that designer accoutrements mean nothing to them. Unfortunately, that’s a struggle for me on an ongoing basis.

So what did I do? I bought a $10 headset to get me through the week until I returned home, and when I did, my daughter called to tell me that she found the originals on the nightstand.

We’ve all heard the expression that we are products of our environment, but that doesn’t really explain our decisions in life. For example, the first decade of my youth was spent in poverty. It was not Appalachian, dirt floor, poverty because we lived in my grandmother’s house, but it was powdered milk, government cheese, patches on my clothes poverty.   Then my dad got a job that literally thrust us into the middle class overnight. Some kids who were raised poor want to help their fellow man. Others want to show everyone that they are superior.   Who does which and why?

After teaching for nearly a decade in City Schools where children from low socio-economic backgrounds, were the rule, I became sensitized to their problems and lack of privilege. My last two years of teaching, however, were spent in a school where the average family income was much higher. The problems were still there, but in different packages. Some of those kids, both rich and poor, have made it big and have dedicated their lives to helping others. Which ones were they and why?

When I went to Europe for the first time, I experienced a different philosophy that fascinated me. It was a form of humanism. As a population they were taking care of each other.

That opinion was reinforced during my first trip to Toronto. There were no people living on the streets in Toronto. The both the ill and the mentally ill were being cared for, and, most importantly, there seemed to be much less violence, a type of peace in the form of mutual respect.

In the mid-2000’s, I made a trip to Africa. In one of the largest oil producing countries in the world, I saw poverty that was incomprehensible. It was clear that the only thing that was trickling down to the masses there was sadness, sorrow, and early death.

When I began working in the Netherlands a few years later, the vast majority of the people were middle class. Beggars were not visible on the streets, and a few years later, at the height of the world economic collapse, a trip to Spain reinforced this. With a 26% unemployment rate, I saw only three beggars in a major city.

It was at that time that the Affordable Care Act was being discussed, and my hopes began to rise.   Finally, we would prioritize wellness and prevention and behavioral health with parity for all other forms of health. We would take care of our fellow man in some way other than imprisonment. We would not have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world, and we would begin to care for each other in a way that would be three times less expensive than our last two wars.

We would find the money that would allow us to take care of our fellow man and things would begin to get better; less obesity, less diabetes, less domestic terrorism from mentally ill, young white men. We would help those people who needed help the most.

The Accountable Care Organization, a result of the Affordable Care Act, seemed to be one way to finally shift the resources from a Sickness to a Wellness and Prevention based venue. We would be reimbursed for quality not quantity.   We would convert from a case by case sickness to a root-cause humane oriented, wellness based system.

Then it struck me that our medical profession has not been trained to function in this system, and as long as the rewards for sickness were greater than those for wellness, making that change would be incredibly difficult. So, I’ve spent the last seven years investing my energy in a philosophy that embraces evidence based, world medicine. It’s my dream that we can integrate world health modalities for wellness and prevention, and save our country from economic ruin while protecting our future generations from premature death.

As a Vice President at Mercy Hospital, the Chief Communications Officer at Conemaugh (now Duke Lifepoint) and finally a CEO at Windber Medical Center, I became a frontline recipient of the knowledge needed to help change our system from sick care to wellness and prevention care.  The problem was that we had directed all of our country’s resources to sickness.   It became increasingly apparent that if we didn’t create massive changes in the system, the Baby Boomers would bankrupt the country and create a generation of children that would not live as long or be even as healthy as their parents.

Four critical stepping stones that appeared along my journey.

1. As a 27 year old band director, I had personally experienced integrative medicine as a patient and saw the incredible value that those modalities could provide to patients.
2. Another fortuitous event that occurred along my journey was that I was interviewed for a CEO position at Boys Town National Research Hospital. I was shocked and amazed when the former president of Boys Town, Father Val Peters, a Jesuit priest, introduced me to the concept of having a genome center as part of the hospital. This was in 1992, about a decade before the mapping of the genome.
3. When I arrived as CEO of Windber Medical Center, I was informed by a former employee that because they had mastered a surgical technique that was unique, Windber surgeons had performed thyroid surgeries on several luminaries back in the 50s and 60s. It showed me that anyone would travel for the appropriate care.
4. This last step came when Congressman John Murtha took an interest in our work, and he gave us an opportunity to become involved with the healthcare within the Department of Defense.

It was the confluence of those opportunities and ideas that merged in my mind, and when we received financial support for breast cancer research though the Congressman, Dr. Craig Shriver appeared on our campus and said to me, “What do you want to do here?”

The next stream of words flowed freely out of my mouth, “I want to create the genome center for the Department of Defense for Breast Cancer.”  His response was, “If you’re going to do genetics, we might as well do proteomics as well.”  To which I said, “We might as well because I’m not sure what either one of them are.  I’ll be the administrator you can be physician and principal investigator.”  And our partnership began.

When I asked him how we would get PhD’s to come to Windber, Pennsylvania, he smiled and said, “Let me help you work on that.”  When the first PhDs arrived I asked them why they had not won the Nobel Prize. Interestingly enough, they had a list of reasons that identified some of the dysfunctionality of basic science.

It was Dr. Richard Somiari who understood and embraced our vision for the Windber Research Institute.   As a musician I told him that I wanted to have ensembles of scientists, not divas and he and his wife, Dr. Stella Somiari, had told me that we also wanted tissue collected in a manner that would produce the finest results.

They also said that we needed to collect patient demographic information in a way that would give the scientist the needed information to do their work.  This resulted in Col. Shriver creating a 40 page protocol on how to collect tissue, and then he, Richard, and Dr. Hai Hu created a 500 question survey of demographic information to be collected from each donor.

This tissue repository, managed by Dr. Stella Somiari and managed by Jim Bombatch with over 60,000 donated breast tissue ended up being used as one of the resource centers for mapping the human breast cancer genome, and with an 84% acceptance rate, nearly triple the acceptance rate of the other major medical organizations that were involved, Windber was rated by the National Cancer Institute as the only platinum quality tissue repository in the United States.

Finally, we decided to create one central data repository to hold all of the collected information.

Fifteen years later, Tom Kurtz, CEO of both the Research Institute and Medical Center made one phone call which captured the imagination of Dr. Patrick Soon Shiong that has led to a remarkable partnership, the first of many that will launch Windber and the Johnstown area into one of the top ranking centers of excellence and cancer care in United States and the world.

Congratulations, Tom and the Board members who embraced this opportunity and to Dr. Soon Shiong for your amazing vision.  I love it when a plan comes together, and I couldn’t be more proud of my friends and former colleagues.