Thursday, March 20, 2014

Received horrible news tonight at around 9:30 PM from Howard Boltansky who called my cell phone. My dear friend and physician for 16 years, David Jacobs died suddenly in Las Vegas today where he was with his brother to watch the NCAA Tournament (March Madness). David had shown me an MRI of his abdomen. About 6 years ago he was struck by a car while running his daily run down by the Mall. He got badly bruised up, but there was no concussion and so other ‘apparent” injuries exception getting banged up badly. About 6 months later on a routine medical examination and MRI, they found a major tear the length of the aorta with clotted blood stably keeping everything in place. Amazingly, his renal vessels and femoral arteries were being perfused, but the tear and clot was extensive. Clearly, this happened at the time of the accident. He had gone to several vascular surgical consultants who told him that this was not repairable and that if they attempted to repair it, he had a very high likelihood of dying on the OR table. They told him that he could live 30 years or he could die suddenly at any time. No way to predict and so he has lived with this hanging over him. In my conversations with his, he was always in good spirits and seemed to accept the risk. Unfortunately, this has happened. I am terribly saddened. I loved David and he took such good care of me. I had trained him when he was an NIAID Was on WTOP for the NYC measles outbreak.