Happy birthday, Dad: My eulogy for Stanley Oransky, May 16, 1941-August 27, 2010

Stanley Oransky

The middle of May can be wrenching for my family. My brother David, who died in a car accident in 1995 at the age of 17, was born on May 12. Mother’s Day usually comes around that time — this year it was the day after what would have been David’s 35th birthday — which is understandably a tough juxtaposition for my mom.

And today, May 16, 2012, would have been my father’s 71st birthday. He died in August 2010.

I’ve been thinking about Dad and David a lot in recent months, wondering how David’s kindness and wisdom, which belied his age, would have developed as he got older, and wishing I could let both of them know how much I miss them. So inspired by Steve Silberman and David Kroll, in honor of my father’s birthday, I’m posting the eulogy I gave at his funeral:

Veterinarians, please don’t take your dog’s thyroid medication

You may remember the flap over then-presidential candidate Al Gore’s pronouncement that his mother-in-law’s arthritis drugs cost more than those he was giving his dog.

But one veterinarian may have taken the “I’ll just use pet drugs instead” idea a bit too far.

In the American Journal of Medicine, SUNY Stony Brook’s Harmeet Singh Narula reports on the case of a “33-year-old veterinarian with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and hypothyroidism” — that’s an autoimmune disorder that causes low thyroid hormone levels — who showed up to the doctor’s office with “mild anxiety, jitteriness, and insomnia.”

Lo and behold, her thyroid hormone levels were high. But why?