NOTE:... for my Family and Friends; most of you already know the details of my cancer adventures, but I'm including a summary of them here for any of my woodturning friends who might read this post. A Gift for my Doctor(s)My cancer adventures and battles began back in 2013 and it all started out with a bang! I'm not going to lay out every last little detail here, but the basics go like this.
Late in that year, (2013) my doctor set me up for a CT scan for a completely unrelated issue and that's when we discovered a rather large mass growing on one of my kidneys and not long after that the mass and the kidney were removed. That's when my two blessings kicked in, the first blessing was the discovery of cancer before it spread to anywhere else in my body and the second being when my treatment plan didn't require any chemo or radiation of any kind after the kidney and the cancer were removed, and so then life moved along quite calmly until late in 2017.
That's when my two SuperHeroines came out to play!
First came my Family PA, Vanessa Kearney, actually she has been taking care of my wife, Kay, and me for many years and she has always kept me headed in the right direction, making sure that I got all my tests and scans in a timely manner and it was one those scans that found my cancer in the very early stages as it came back in my kidney bed and lungs late in 2017. That's when my Oncologist, Dr. Heather Shearer, came onboard and it's her diagnosis and treatment plan that has kept me above ground and breathing all this time since then. There is a third SuperHeroine on my team of course and that's my wife, Kay, because as a retired Nurse she knows a thing or two about medical care so her guidance and advice have kept me safe through the years.
Side Note: Like many, or most of you know, drug prices are crazy high and some are astronomical! The cancer drug that I'm on costs so much (about $7000 per Mo) and the co-pay so high ($895 per Mo) that I simply would not be able to afford it except for the fact that Dr. Shearer's staff was able to find a grant for me that covered the co-pay.Whoops! I just received a notice (10/8/19) that the funding for my grant has been used up, so now we have to start working on a new source.
So, enough of the back story... let us get on to the woodturning.
It has always seemed more than obvious to me that these two ladies deserve any display of gratitude that I can muster and my wood turnings seemed the best way for me to show them how much they mean to me and also to my family. So, I wanted the gifts to be based on something vintage, or historical that was also related to something that they would be using in their everyday medical practice and during my research, I came upon the perfect medical tool... the stethoscope!
Back in 1816 a French doctor, René Laennec, tried using a rolled-up paper because he didn't feel comfortable placing his head on a woman's chest to listen to her heart and the rolled-up paper worked OK, so he then designed the first stethoscope as a hollow wooden tube. At first, I was going to base my turning on that first wooden tube, but during further research, I found a design with a bit more personality and style.
Before moving on to the finished turning I made a couple of prototypes to test my design ideas and to build up my skills which were sorely out of practice. This one is made from a piece of SYP from the BORG and while it's a bit rough and unfinished it helped me get ready for the real thing.
And the finished Stethoscope.
Purpleheart, 2"x7", finished with 40-50 coats of thin CA.
And the Big Payoff!Vanessa received her gift back in May 0r June and sorry to say my phone died and took any pictures of her with it.
It has taken me this long to work up the energy to finish the gift for Heather and in these two pictures she shows that she likes her new stethoscope.
BTW... she tried it and it works.
Thanks for looking... Ken.
