In his email, Larry included a few quotations about the “wisdom of the ages” and I’ve used a few of them here and added a few of my own – all with some commentary.

“Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years” (Genesis 25). Isn’t that what we’d all like for ourselves and our loved ones? To die in a “good old age” and “full of years”? Wow, doesn’t that sound great! But today it is truly rare, I think. Dying in a “good old age” has been replaced with life-prolonging technologies and a true fear of death. And if we are “full of years,” that is full of the wisdom that comes with hard-won experience, is there anyone there to listen or care? Are we headed in the right direction with this?

“The truth is I’m getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don’t feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.” (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores) Don’t get stuck on the title of the book. How many of us look at ourselves in the mirror in disbelief and say “but I still feel like I’m 40”? (Or 50 or 60?) We’re not, but isn’t it a glorious feeling? And let’s hope that we can continue to live with the wisdom of being older coupled with the vitality of our youth.

Said the little boy, “Sometimes I drop my spoon.”
Said the old man, “I do that too.”
The little boy whispered, “I wet my pants.”
I do that too,” laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, “I often cry.”
The old man nodded, “So do I.”
But worst of all,” said the boy, “it seems
Grown-ups don’t pay attention to me.”
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
I know what you mean,” said the little old man.”
(Shel Silverstein, The Little Boy and the Old Man)

Shel Silverstein was a favorite of my reading time with my kids and he’s always full of elemental wisdom. Social isolation, that’s the term we have for it now, is probably the most daunting challenge for the elderly in our society. Left unaddressed, it’s the source of so many bad physical, social, and mental health effects. We all have the opportunity in our lives to reach out to an Older American – a family member, a neighbor, an old colleague from work, a crew member we worked with on a series or a film 15 years ago, and pull them out of that isolation for an hour or two a week. Is there a better way of spending your time? Wouldn’t we want this for ourselves as well? There are plenty of volunteer opportunities at MPTF, on campus and in the community, for you to feel the warmth not only of a “wrinkled old hand” but of a grateful heart as well.

“The smoldering embers of a fiery youth.” Larry saw this on the T-shirt of a very old man marching down the concourse at a major airport. I love it! This reminds me that we are at the very cusp of the Baby Boomer generation turning 65, the generation whose early lives were shaped by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, the Vietnam War, Earth Day, Women’s Liberation. We estimate that 75,000 Baby Boomer entertainment industry members will cross the threshold of 65 before 2020. We lived through much “hotter” days back then, I think, and hopefully we still have that fire in our bellies today as we face some of life’s biggest challenges. Part of what we learned in our youth was the power of community, of people banding together toward a single purpose. Let’s not lose that sense of community as we grow older! If you’re reading this blog, at least one important community for you is MPTF and members of the entertainment industry. Let’s all pull together for our common good.

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” (Robert Frost) And so it does. And what will we make out of it? That’s the question we all have to ask ourselves. We have the opportunity to do good, to support those who need our help, to enrich our own lives by sharing it with others. In that inexorable march to our own old age, what can we be doing to heighten and enhance the lives of others beyond “it goes on”? We hear from so many of our MPTF volunteers that they get more out of their volunteer work than the time they put in could ever measure. We can do better than “it goes on.”

“Cast me not off in the time of my old age. Forsake me not when my strength faileth.” (Psalms 71:9) This is our moral obligation. We cannot neglect or ignore the Older Americans, or in our more narrow situation the Older Entertainment Industry Members. We cannot neglect or ignore the frail and vulnerable entertainment industry seniors who were at the center of our community in their time. They sustained the industry, left it better and bigger than when they found it, and made it possible for all of us to get our own opportunities. It is our responsibility to be there for them now. This is at least in part what MPTF is all about!

A health myth is a false idea, generally accepted as true, with nebulous origins.  Strangely, in this day of instant access to the internet, health myths seem as powerful as ever.  One of the reasons is probably that, despite the amount of information we have, it is often hard to determine the quality.  And saying something often enough seems to create an air of truthfulness — like on the internet where a single post can result in millions of reposts.

That raises the question, how do we know what is true?  How can you determine for yourself what is a myth, and what is not?  Well, the answer is as old as philosophy itself.  On the medical side, there is an ongoing movement to hold medicine to the highest standard of scientific data.  It is called “evidence based medicine.”  Although certainly not perfect, it is a reasonable approach to viewing the best quality data available to us on any given medical topic.  It is an effort to find reliable knowledge amidst the vast quantities of frequently conflicting information.  This partially contrasts with the traditional view that medical knowledge comes from experience, and tries to separate anecdote from the larger reality.  After all, individual observation (personal experience) is probably the very origin of many of our myths.

I thought of a few points which should alert you to identify these myths.  Next time you hear a particular nugget of wisdom, see if it passes the following criteria:

1.  How do we know that?  How do we know that gum stays in your stomach for years?  What would we have to do to test this?  First, have a willing participant swallow gum.  Be sure they don’t chew any more, as they may accidentally swallow it again.  Wait a few years.  Stick a scope down their throat to look into their stomach, and see if the gum is still there.  Even if you found the gum, you would want to repeat the experiment with a few hundred more participants to be sure the first time wasn’t just a really strange fluke.  When you think of it that way, what is the probability of such a study happening?  Not high.  Yeah, that’s a myth.

2.  Does it make sense?  We use only 20% of our brain.  Really?  That means if I have a stroke, I can knock out 80% of my brain and do just fine.  Hmmm.  Somehow, I don’t feel that lucky.

3.  Where did you hear it?  If it was “some guy on the internet,” or “some guy who knew this other guy, who dated a girl who shared a dog with another girl’s neighbor,” automatic myth-alert.  Certainly plenty of prominent people claim completely unsupported facts too, but that is a topic for another time.  I recommend more mainstream web sites for medical information needs, although they are not always immune to myth either.   I am partial to Mayoclinic.com, but Webmd.com is also very good.

If you think none of these points are particularly insightful, I would agree.  It is just
that oftentimes in daily life, we forget to question the statements we are told, and the beliefs we already have.  Once you question something, you are already on the way to understanding something more.  Always feel free to discuss these issues with your physician, as it is their life’s work to sort through the evidence, and present the conclusions.

And unfortunately, I cracked my knuckles before typing this, so I have to finish before the arthritis sets in.  I hope this was helpful.  If not, please don’t roll your eyes or make any other funny expressions.  Your face can freeze.

And then once in a while, we have a real breakthrough where we know that the efforts we’ve been putting in are beginning to pay real and very measurable dividends.  Here’s one of them that I’m really proud of.

In 2009, in response to some of our Long Term Care residents who were seeking out a board-and-care (small residential facility) situation, Naomi Rodda, our Manager of Community Social Services, began exploring the VA (Veterans Administration) Aid & Attendance Benefit program to supplement the income of these industry members.  The Aid & Attendance Benefit program is directed at vets who have served our country during a qualifying period of war, received an honorable discharge, have care needs that require assistance, and now find themselves in need of financial support.  Surviving spouses may also be eligible.  Naomi recognized this program as being underutilized by our industry members on campus and in the community and became passionate about getting qualified industry members and their surviving spouses enrolled.

And then there was really breathtaking government bureaucracy to deal with!  Lots of it!  It took several years for Naomi and Cec Veltre, Resident Business Services, to learn how to “work it” – how to navigate the system both online and in person, how to identify qualified industry members and link them to the Aid & Attendance program, how to make progress through very daunting paperwork.  To their credit, Naomi and Cec and others at MPTF have built strong relationships at the Sepulveda VA.  They have had VA clinics on MPTF’s campus to help industry members both understand the program and complete their application forms.  And more recently, they have developed a sympathetic contact at the VA who has committed to seeing our clients one time a month to help them progress through the maze.  And we’ve had a few early successes!!!!

Naomi and Cec and the other extraordinary MPTF social workers they partner with now have over 25 industry members in the VA Aid & Attendance Benefit pipeline.  Just recently we learned that one of our residents was awarded the Aid & Attendance benefit – with a retroactive check from the date of the filing and over $1,000 a month in future benefits!  Some are getting ready to apply, some have already applied and are awaiting the disposition of their cases, and some few have already been granted Federal funding.  Naomi reports that best expectation for any industry member applying is an average turnaround of 18-24 months.  In other words, if you think you qualify for this VA benefit, DON’T WAIT!

MPTF Social Services also facilitates links for veterans around other benefits including service-related disability pensions, medical care (including vision, hearing, and dental), prescription drug coverage and community placement in VA residential facilities throughout California.

Think about the impact of a MPTF social worker with real determination to improve the lives of a pocket of senior industry members who are owed a debt of gratitude from their government and who either don’t know about it or are struggling to collect it.  And please, please, please, if you think you are eligible or will be eligible, Naomi and Cec say
“it’s never too soon to get the process going.”  Get in touch!

In medicine, we try to make logical deductions from the evidence we see.  We ask questions, perform tests, ask more questions, perform more tests, until the likelihood of a particular diagnosis is correct.  However, in many circumstances, we can almost never be absolutely certain of the diagnosis.  Our history-taking skills and examination skills gets as close as possible to understanding what illnesses are likely to be present.  Very sophisticated laboratory tests, such as antibody tests, PET scans, MRIs, nuclear stress tests, etc. give us answers but are rarely so specific that the diagnosis is unequivocal on the basis of a test alone.  This is quite difficult for many patients to understand.  For example, the patient with chest pain that is not typical of heart attack, who is worried that this may be heart disease, wants to obtain a stress test to “rule it out.”  Unfortunately even the best stress test cannot completely rule out heart disease in all cases.  And in fact, many stress tests especially in a middle-aged man are falsely positive, giving a patient a huge amount of anxiety unnecessarily.  It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do some of these tests, however it does mean we need to be cautious interpreting their meaning.

The logic behind medical decision-making and behind poker decision-making is based on the same mathematical principal of Bayes theorem, which enables us to make predictions based on prior probabilities and conditional probabilities.

Beyond that, poker tells are just like clues a doctor reads when a patient enters the room.  Did that guy with back pain, asking for a disability extension, just hop on the table as if nothing were bothering him?  Everything from skin texture, to voice changes, spontaneous movements, eye contact, etc., is processed by us in some way to make judgments about what the nature of the patient’s problem is.

As a four hit the board and another four hit the board, my full house was looking pretty good.   When I pushed all in, I was pretty surprised I got an instant call.  What could he possibly have?   As I showed my jacks, I looked across the table.  A pair of fours gave him quads—four fours.  I’d better stick to medicine.

“I’m pleased we were able to reach this time out,” said Bob Beitcher, MPTF CEO. “After speaking at length with Dave, I feel more optimistic that the two sides can figure a way to reach a mutually satisfactory conclusion,” Beitcher continued.

“I am confident that we can reach an agreement that will continue to make MPTF a great place to receive and deliver care,” Regan said.

SEIU-UHW has rescinded its intent to strike at MPTF for 3 days starting the evening of Monday, March 18th. Both parties have also agreed to withdraw their Unfair Labor Practice claims at this time. SEIU-UHW has also chosen to withdraw its bargaining proposal regarding Nurse Staffing levels.

Our primary objective now and during the negotiations has been to establish an economic framework that will allow us to sustain the services of MPTF today and for future generations of industry members. We have been completely transparent with SEIU-UHW with regard to our financial condition. An organization like ours relies heavily on federal and state healthcare reimbursements, and these are shrinking by the moment. We need to size our costs to fit our anticipated revenues and in so doing we are asking all of our staff to join in a shared sacrifice. SEIU-UHW has insisted on its own framework for settlement. We believe its proposal is inconsistent with our ability to serve our patients and residents as well as our ability to provide job stability now and in the future.

As we have pointed out at the bargaining table, our overall compensation practices are highly competitive. The union has been unwilling or unable to dispute that.

Our founders’ vision of “taking care of our own” is what drives us every day and gives us the strength to carry on the mission. We wish to thank the entertainment community for its overwhelming outpouring of support during this critical time and welcome those who wish to lend a hand next week in keeping the show going to join us at our Woodland Hills campus.

Those are the headlines. Now to share just one of the stories that will give you the human side of the metrics that get you five stars. Kaye Phillip Brown has been a resident at MPTF since March 2009. Her husband was a long-time member of IATSE Local 706 (make-up artists and hair stylists) and Kaye moved here after he passed away. In March 2011, she fell and endured one year of tremendous challenge – in rehab, several hospitalizations, and then in long term care.. She was followed all this time by our Community Care Team — doctor, nurse practitioner, chaplaincy, activities coordinator, social worker, volunteers – and we were active in providing care to keep her going and getting better. When we began to once again admit patients to the MPTF long-term care facility in March 2012, we invited Kaye to move back “home” and she took us up on the offer. At the time, her health was in a desperate condition: she was barely talking and was being fed through a tube. The rest is wonderful news. In the last 12 months, she has shown constant improvement in her health and spirits; she’s walking again and showing the old charm and beauty that she was known for.

And here’s the part that no ratings can tell you about. Kaye is in such good spirits lately that she’s been talking loudly about her desire to “get out of here.” As pretty as our campus is, she wanted a change of scenery. So one of our Activities coordinators, Abel Hurtado, took her to the beach in Santa Monica. Here are the photos:

You can’t beat that! The high nurse staffing levels, the quality of service, everything else US News measures– that’s a five star rating. A day at the beach, priceless.

Three of our former residents received special tribute at Sunday night’s wonderful Oscars event – an AD who broke through racial boundaries; a one-of-a-kind visual effects artist, and a make-up artist talented enough to be hired by the CIA. All three represent what we love about Hollywood and why we honor MPTF’s special place in it.

Charles Washburn lived at MPTF from 2008 – 2012. The first African American to apply and graduate from the DGA’s Assistant Directors Training Program, Charles had a successful career as an AD and production manager in film and television. Known to many as “Star Trek Charlie,” Charlie spent his 400 hours of DGA apprenticeship on the original Paramount sci-fi series and then was asked back as a 2nd AD. Twenty years later, Charles also worked on several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the late 1960s, along with DGA’s first black member, 1st AD Wendell Franklin, Charles worked on The Bill Cosby Show.

Working in a time when racism was still prevalent on Hollywood film and TV sets, Charles always said that he never had any issues. No surprise! You’ll never meet a more courtly, gentle, and self-assured character than Charlie Washburn. I had the pleasure over the past few years of spending time once a month with CW at our Men’s Club breakfasts, and I enjoyed every moment of dining with a motion picture pioneer.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences paid tribute to Charles Washburn in its In Memoriam. Well done and appreciated by everyone who knew him at MPTF.

Matthew Yuricich, an MPTF resident who lived here only from March until the end of May last year, was also deservedly recognized in the In Memoriam on Sunday night’s Oscars. A winner of the 1976 Academy award for Visual Effects for his work in Logan’s Run, Matt was one of Hollywood’s finest and most prolific visual effects artists, specializing in matte painting on glass. He was one of the last surviving matte artists from the Golden Era of Hollywood, with a career that reached its pinnacle just as CGI was moving into this territory. Matt was also nominated for his work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Bladerunner (1982). His speech in accepting the Oscar from actor Roy Scheider included the classic: “..and I’d like to thank myself, I think I deserve it.”

Much of Matt’s earliest works as a matte artist was uncredited but included work on North by Northwest and Ben Hur (both 1959). There are about another 200 film credits to follow. Look for the “money shots” in films like Ben Hur, Planet of the Apes, Ghostbusters, China Syndrome, and they involved photographing Matt’s painting on glass.

The third special tribute from Sunday night’s show is a bit more obscure, but hang in there with me. Best Picture of the Year – Argo! Key character in the film, wonderfully portrayed by John Goodman, honorary Academy-award winner John Chambers. You got it, an MPTF resident until his death in August 2001. John’s story has been told and re-told so many times in the past few months due to the fascination with this Hollywood character’s involvement in CIA activities, including the Argo episode. John worked as a dental technician in World War II and in dealing with the ravages of war he learned much about repairing more than just teeth. Chambers created new ears, noses, chins, and teeth for our service members and when the war ended he applied those skills to make up effects. While he had a remarkable showbiz career, capped by an honorary Oscar in 1969 for his work on the 1968 classic Planet of the Apes (there was no Oscar for Make-Up until 1981), Chambers used to talk to folks at MPTF about a different activity that he was very proud of: making prosthetics for cancer victims who were otherwise too poor to obtain support.

John was very proud of his Oscar and glad to share it with those who wanted to see it. He was a real raconteur, with his sly Irish humor, and loved to share stories about his life and work. Linda Young, an MPTF volunteer (she shares her wonderful dogs with the residents), was a particularly close friend of John’s and still has John’s copy of Tony Mendez’s book Master of Disguise about Argo. (He loaned it to her to read and then insisted that she was the right person to have it.) It has a special personal note from Tony on it: “To John Chambers, aka Jerome Calloway. He showed us the way to play the game and how to win!” Linda described him to me as “brilliant and smart, immensely humorous, as well as a kind and charming man.”

Looking at John’s IMDB entry for this blog, I also realized that John created the trademark pointed ears for Leonard Nimoy for his Mr. Spock character as well as the incredible “masks” for Planet of the Apes. John Chambers’ life at MPTF and those of Charles Washburn and Matthew Yuricich didn’t overlap, and sadly they are not around today to ask if they knew or worked with each other back in the Star Trek or Planet of the Apes days, but like so many of our residents here at MPTF there is that interconnectivity that comes from a close-knit family of industry members creating the world’s greatest entertainment.

Well, sometimes (apparently like in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”) a hat is just a hat. At MPTF recently we learned that at other times there is true symbolic value vested in objects and spaces. During the dark days of our Long Term Care crisis (you might remember …) MPTF management decided to shut down the dining room on the Garden level of our hospital where our LTC residents had been dining. Instead, meals were brought to the residents and they dined either individually or in small groups on the floors where they lived. This was before my time, but I believe the reasoning behind the change was that there were fewer LTC residents, which made the program a challenge to maintain.

In any event, the change wasn’t well accepted by residents or their families for that matter. It’s been the perennial “pebble in the shoe” and for some time now I have had questions about “when are we going to open the dining room again?” Well, guess what? On Valentine’s Day, we did it! Thanks to the great support from our dining staff, our activities team, our nursing staff, and our volunteers (and many family volunteers!), we re-launched our Social Dining program on the Garden level. On Monday night, the first time I could get over there to see them, the sheer delight of it gave me goose bumps! About 25 or so residents were dining communally, with wait staff serving them deliciously prepared hot food, and nursing and activities staff and volunteers helping out on the feeding side where needed. All I saw was smiling faces, happiness peeking out from inside of these frail and vulnerable senior industry members, and even big grins from our staff. Who couldn’t feel good about this? A little music from the Golden Age and they’ll be all set!

For everyone involved in our Long Term Care program, that dining room and the social dining experience had become something much more than what it seems: it was a symbol of the way things were before they went awry for a few years, a return to the good old days that many of them knew and missed, a return to them of a more cheerful and dignified way of sharing a meal and a few stories. We are sure grateful to residents and family members who exhibited patience and believed in us when we said “it’s coming,” and to so many people who supported us along the way. It takes a village sometimes – I guess that’s a symbol as well!

Here is a quoted paragraph from the FDA website on the basic definition of what they are:

“The law defines dietary supplements in part as products taken by mouth that contain a “dietary ingredient.” Dietary ingredients include vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and herbs or botanicals, as well as other substances that can be used to supplement the diet.

These products are available in stores throughout the United States, as well as on the Internet. They are labeled as dietary supplements and include among others:

• vitamin and mineral products
• “botanical” or herbal products—These come in many forms and may include plant materials, algae, macroscopic fungi, or a combination of these materials.
• amino acid products—Amino acids are known as the building blocks of proteins and play a role in metabolism.
• enzyme supplements—Enzymes are complex proteins that speed up biochemical reactions.”

People use dietary supplements for a wide assortment of reasons. Some attempt to compensate for poor diets, medical conditions, or eating habits that limit the intake of essential vitamins and nutrients. Other people look to them to boost energy or to get a good night’s sleep. Postmenopausal women consider using them to counter a sudden drop in estrogen levels. But how do we know that the vitamins are really doing that?

According to the law, most claims made in the labeling of dietary supplements do not have to be proven as accurate or truthful in order to meet the FDA’s satisfaction.  Dietary supplement manufacturers do not have to get the agency’s approval before selling these products.

It is also against the law to market a dietary supplement product as a treatment or cure for a specific disease, or to relieve the symptoms of a disease. Hmmm. That sounds a bit worrisome to me. So, the FDA does not require the producers of these products to prove their claims. And, yet millions of people take them regularly, blindly and on the advice of their “experts” (“my friend takes these and his arthritis is almost gone now…”)

So, how do I choose my supplements? I assume that my diet is generally good and well-rounded. That helps. We all know, however, that we may not always get our total needs met with food alone. So I take and suggest a multivitamin appropriate for my age and sex. The rest of my ‘supplement’ intake is based on researched articles related to specific medical conditions and what studies have shown is appropriate.

Do not believe that all vitamins and supplements are safe. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing when it comes to vitamins. For example, Vitamin E over 400 iu per day has actually been shown to increase cardiovascular disease, Vitamin A in excess can cause problems with skin, hair and vision. Vitamin C in greater amounts than 500mg per day is associated with increased gastrointestinal symptoms.

Using supplements improperly can be harmful. Taking a combination of supplements, using these products together with medicine, or substituting them in place of prescribed medicines could lead to harmful, even life-threatening results.

So do the right thing. Do your own research from valid peer reviewed sites, and TALK TO YOUR PHYSICIAN. Find out if your plan is correct for your age, sex and medical problems. I know I will. Now, take your vitamins like a good kid!

Here is a final quote from the FDA:

“Be a Safe and Informed Consumer:

• Let your health care professional advise you on sorting reliable information from questionable information.
• Contact the manufacturer for information about the product you intend to use.
• Be aware that some supplement ingredients, including nutrients and plant components, can be toxic. Also, some ingredients and products can be harmful when consumed in high amounts, when taken for a long time, or when used in combination with certain other drugs, substances, or foods.
• Do not self-diagnose any health condition. Work with health care professionals to determine how best to achieve optimal health.
• Do not substitute a dietary supplement for a prescription medicine or therapy, or for the variety of foods important to a healthful diet.
• Do not assume that the term “natural” in relation to a product ensures that the product is wholesome or safe.
• Be wary of hype and headlines. Sound health advice is generally based upon research over time, not a single study.
• Learn to spot false claims. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

www.fda.gov/consumer/updates/supplements080408.html