Life Is Short (No Pun Intended)

by Jennifer Arnold

  Now, I mentioned previously that I had learned to drive with hand controls, as I wasn’t all too confident my legs were trustworthy enough to depend on while behind the wheel. What I didn’t mention was that by virtue of driving with hand controls, my ability to multitask was limited—or so you would think. My left hand operated the wheel spinner, like the one found on the steering wheel of big rigs. My right hand was for the hand control, which had two functions, depending on which direction I moved in. The gas pedal was depressed, and the car accelerated when I pulled it toward me, and the brake would engage when I pushed the hand control toward the dash. You would think that with both hands occupied, there was very little I could do other than drive. But that was only if you were a mere mortal!

  I smoked cigarettes back then, and lighting up meant abandoning the wheel or the gas/brake to grab my smokes and lighter. It got a bit crazier when I abandoned the wheel and the gas/brake to light up. And who didn’t like coffee with a smoke on the way to work? Yup, the average morning ride in the car involved this juggling act between coffee, cigarettes, and driving. (Why I always tell this story with driving being the last thing I mention is still oddly funny to me.)

  With Mike belted into the passenger seat, I eased the car onto the Sagtikos Parkway, one of those little snake-thin north-south corridors all over Long Island that were designed before the concept of traffic. Mike was terrified and mesmerized.

  “You stop and go with that stick?” he commented.

  “I control the wheel with the hand spinner,” I explained, trying to point out all the different functions on my control. It was fun to explain to someone who had never seen this sort of equipment in operation before, and Michael couldn’t have been more impressed. I could do turns in that car that I can’t do today using two hands. He truly was fascinated with my driving. But what blew him away even more was everything else I did while driving.

  “You smoke while you drive,” he said more than once in awe. “How do you do that?” He then proceeded to grab a cigarette from my box of Marlboros, which was sliding from side to side on the dashboard. “How do you drink coffee, smoke, and drive at the same time?” To which I answered, “Same as you, carefully!”

  Michael was a wonderful boss and a great man (still is). He started defending me from some of my soon-to-be-coworkers before I even started, saying their jobs were on the line if they had a problem with my stature. The firm was a big medical device distributor that received orders from big umbrella home health care agencies like Gentiva, which served tens of thousands of homebound patients a day as well as many of the hospitals across the country. We’d supply things such as home infusion supplies, tubing, needles and syringes, medication and infusion pumps—anything ordered by the supervising agency. When I started out, I was a sales rep for the south. Specifically, I was responsible for all alternate care (home) infusion companies throughout Alabama, Georgia, and northern Florida. Most of my days were spent speaking with pharmacy owners, pharmacists, and purchasing managers about their business needs, products, and the services we offered. I would ask for orders and help expedite requests when patients were being discharged to my clients’ care. They would rely on me to save them from service failures (an inability to care for the patient). I was good at what I did, too. I grew revenue in that territory by double digits in just months. I was moved to another struggling region, the Midwest, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and parts of Missouri, Nebraska, and Iowa. There, I really did well. After six months in the territory, I had signed major contracts with big home infusion pharmacies and grew the revenue and profitability by 200 percent.

  Thanks to my motivation and execution, the growth in my territories afforded me promotions two or three times within a couple of years. First I became a regional sales manager and then a director of sales, which was the job Michael had when he hired me. He was doing well, too, enjoying a couple of promotions of his own—first vice president and then president of the division.

  It was a good, healthy firm, and a lot of fun to work for. But with the world of home care exploding and changing as fast as it was, mergers and acquisitions were the next logical progression for our company. My company soon merged with a few other corporations to make one larger organization that had a diverse range of products and services, manufacturing, and distribution. That company conglomerate of nonsynergistic divisions was soon broken apart and sold to other companies. Two of the divisions went in a different direction, and the two home care divisions (of which I was still a part) were sold to a New Jersey–based company. The acquiring company had been on the acquisition trail for years, and we were the final purchase before the fall. We should have seen it coming. The integration of our business, a mere $60 million in revenue, into this company of a quarter billion was done terribly. After thirty days, we saw our revenues trending at 50 percent of what they once were. Then the news came down that the parent company was filing for bankruptcy, which meant we were filing for bankruptcy, too.

  When we emerged from bankruptcy six months later, my team, which included Mike, took over the parent company. Since we had filed for bankruptcy, and the bank technically owned the company, we had to sell. We broke it back into two pieces and sold the main corporation to one firm and our division to another.

  For the smaller sale, I was part of the deal team, which made me some money. I did well enough to buy a house, an eighteen-hundred-square foot ranch in Port Jefferson with a lovely outdoor deck and pool, which was perfect for summer nights. It needed a little updating, but I was handy and could do a lot of the work myself. My friends and I tackled some of the electrical, plumbing, and cosmetic stuff. When it got crazy, I let my paycheck do the work and hired professionals for the bathroom revisions, hardwood flooring, and replacement of the oil burner.

  My increased compensation finally afforded me the ability to purchase some custom-made suits. Buying clothes, especially suits, had always been a challenge. My dimensions are not exactly “off the rack.” My chest at its widest is forty inches, and my waist (at its narrowest), twenty-four inches. I have a waist, one that has been ever expanding and contracting over the years, but I am more like a big barrel in the chest. Combine that with my height, and a suit coat has no choice but to drape on me.

  The first place I used to go to buy suits was Macy’s. They had a decent selection, so I’d pick one or two in the men’s department and have them altered. The tailoring was where I spent an arm and a leg, not the suit itself. Sometimes the pants were too baggy, or the crotch was too low. Or the jacket was cut so short that the pockets were barely over the hem, and the jacket looked as if I had gotten it caught on something. If I raised my arm, the sleeve would pull all the way up the elbow. For dress shirts, I’d buy a dress shirt with a seventeen-and-a-half-inch or eighteen-inch neck and the shortest sleeves possible for a guy with an eighteen-inch neck. Normally a 30/31 was the shortest I could find. To make sure the cuff was correct, the tailor would have to cut away six to ten inches of sleeve, and when they reattached the cuff, it was sewn onto a much wider part of the sleeve, up toward the bicep and shoulder. The “poofy” arms looked like something a pirate would wear. Sometimes, the person altering would want to shorten the sleeve at the end closest to the shoulder, thereby leaving the cuff intact, but this made for awfully narrow sleeves.

  Once I had a little money, I started going to Giliberto Designs, Inc., in the garment district of Manhattan. The clothes were fully custom, with nothing off the rack. Giliberto dressed President George W. Bush for his first inauguration, so to say he had distinguished clients was an understatement. He dressed many players for the New York Giants, Knicks, Yankees, Mets, and Jets—all the guys who don’t fit into a “regular” suit and want top quality.

  In his shop, photos of famous people wearing their Giliberto suits covered the walls. I was starstruck that I was buying suits from the same tailor as Bill Parcells and President Bush. One day years later I looked up, and by gosh, Bill Klein was hangin
g on that wall, wearing blue pinstripes, looking only slightly more subdued than a hit man.

  Giliberto made a template for me on my first visit. This template, completely unique and specific for me, wasn’t just a pre-existing pattern he altered for me—it was my template, for Bill Klein and only Bill Klein. The suits were two thousand dollars, and that was ten years ago, but worth every penny.

  I’m not going to lie—I’ve become accustomed to getting only custom fits. When I first started to be able to afford it, I would buy everything custom. My shirts were from the Custom Shop. When their business consolidated and closed all of the locations in the tristate area, I’d drive the six hours to Washington, D.C., their only location in the mid-Atlantic/Northeast, to get my shirts. I’d get to town and stay in a hotel overnight. In the morning, I’d get measured, order five or six shirts, have lunch, and drive the six hours home. Once, I decided to take my friend Andria with me, which was great, as I loved the company. She thought I was a bit crazy to go to such lengths for some shirts, but considering my options, she understood. My assortment of shirts was usually ready in three to four weeks.

  More recently, I discovered a place in Beverly Hills called Jimmy Au’s For Men 5'8" & Under. Jimmy sells to all the height-challenged stars—Tom Cruise, Jason Alexander, Danny DeVito. He also has dress and casual shirts that are made specifically for people who are short (which, incidentally, seems to include much of Hollywood—even the big guys are topping out at six feet), and he can get them to me in three to four days. I was concerned that the price in Beverly Hills was going to scare me away. But in the end, Jimmy’s clothing is made small enough that normal tailoring is all that is required to take an off-the-rack shirt and make it fit perfectly. This was a great find, and like Jennifer, once I find a brand that works, I don’t let it go.

  Getting nice clothes as a Little Person has become easier in the past twenty years, thanks to children’s clothes becoming a lot more stylish. When I was growing up, the only shoes that fit me, men’s or boys, looked like Keds. When I reached adult age, the last thing I wanted to buy was kids’ dress shoes, with rubber soles and big, ugly stitching. They had no arch support—and they were just embarrassing to wear. So I used to buy Allen Edmonds shoes in size six, because that was the smallest adult size—$225 a pop. My true size was four and a half, wide, but at least I wasn’t in “big kids” shoes. My ostrich leather shoes were my favorites—so very nice. I’d suck it up in the wrong size, even if it meant tripping on the carpet from time to time.

  • • •

  BACK TO BUSINESS. Once the divestiture of the companies was complete, Michael elected to move on. I stayed behind and did the wind-down of the Deer Park office. Upon closing the office in June 2005, I left the company, too. That July, I was back in business, with Michael as my partner. Together, we opened our own lead generation and business-consulting firm that catered to companies in the health care industry. The model was fairly simple. Our clients were medical device manufacturers, distributors, and providers. We would offer a variety of services, including lead generation, whereby we would contact our clients’ target customer base and identify those with an interest and need to do business with our client, and forward the key contact and prospect information to the client for follow-up. We would also work with clients to develop their internal sales teams, help with product and sales training, and consult with executive management on direction and vision of companies, operational efficiencies, and adoption of technology. Our clients included Fortune 500 companies in the health-care sector, as well as start-up companies with innovative products. We had our first sale the very first month we were in business.

  We had our ups and downs, but we did pretty well. Like many start-ups, we started our business out of my house. Within months, our business was doing pretty well. We had nine employees working out of the home office—an odd-shaped twelve-by-twenty-five-foot room that I had turned into two twelve-by-twelve shared offices with desks, computers, and phones in every corner. The commute was great for me, but I knew it was time to find a commercial space when I found one of our employees on my living room sofa, watching my television, and enjoying some cheese he had found in my refrigerator during his lunch break.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jen

  Medical School

  MEDICAL SCHOOL TRIED MY intellect and stamina more than anything I have ever done before. Going to Johns Hopkins was a dream, but nothing worth working hard for is easy. My first days of freshman orientation included lots of bonding with my classmates. The first two years, all two hundred of us spent eight to twelve hours a day together in lectures, labs, and small group discussions.

  My least favorite class was immunology, but my favorite was gross anatomy. Gross anatomy is what most people think about when they envision what medical school must be like. It is a defining step in becoming a doctor. For gross anatomy, we were grouped into teams of four students and we each were assigned a cadaver. Our cadaver was a seventy-year-old woman. We were instructed to have the utmost respect for our cadavers, who had been willing to donate their bodies so future doctors could learn. For the next nine weeks, these were our “persons.” Their real identities were never given to us, so many groups named their cadaver. At the end of the course, we had a memorial for our “persons,” and then their bodies were returned to their families for funerals and/or burials.

  We spent hours dissecting everything from skin and bones to delicate nerves and veins. The whole lab smelled like formaldehyde, and so did we. Because the protective gowns we had to wear were so big, I bought my own smaller aprons, which then meant that I had to transport them back to my room to wash every week—that was not pleasant—and at some point my room began to smell like formaldehyde. I also brought my own step stool—the same one I ended up later using on the wards—but given the number of “messy things” (subcutaneous tissue and fat) that end up on the floor during gross anatomy, the school eventually made me a more sturdy one to prevent a potential fall. What I didn’t expect was that the further along we got in the class, the deeper the dissection got into the body—and the deeper in I got as well. While my teammates might have been up to their elbows dissecting, I was up to my shoulders.

  Gross anatomy can be pretty . . . well, gross. However, I was never unduly grossed out by anatomy. In fact I loved it. But I didn’t like entering the lab late in the evening to cram for an exam when not many other people were around. I tried not to do that too much. It is a little creepy to be in a room with fifty cadavers by yourself!

  After the first year and a half of basic sciences, we got to enter the wards, but not before the traditional White Coat Ceremony. This event celebrates your transition from the basic sciences to clinical medicine. During the ceremony, each student receives his or her first “white coat” with the Johns Hopkins insignia and his or her name embroidered on it. At Johns Hopkins, this is a short white coat, more like a blazer. Of course, mine had to be specially made, but I was very proud of it.

  My first year, I lived on campus in the Lowell J. Reed Medical Residence Hall, a ten-story red brick building on McElderry Street designated for all first-year med students. Reed Hall had two wings with vastly different accommodations connected by a communal lobby area. Fortunately, I was in the east wing, the nicer of the two, so our suites had semiprivate bathrooms and small kitchenettes. I had three suite mates, Tracy, Asma, and Carmen, and we each had our own bedroom with shared kitchen, bathroom, and living room. The west wing was basic dormitory singles and doubles with communal bathrooms on all the floors. The building was really old, but at least recent renovations had given it central air, wall-to-wall carpet, and 24/7 security. Everyone living there loved that it was so close to the medical school classrooms and the library, even if we didn’t love the accommodations. Besides, we were hardly in our rooms anyway, not with the amount of work, labs, and studying we had to do. Everybody at Hopkins was fairly driven and had been a top student at whatever undergraduate school they had come
from, so there was pressure and a lot of competition. I studied hard and spent hours upon hours studying everywhere and anywhere, from the undergraduate campus library (as it was much prettier and more comfortable than the one in the medical school), to our favorite local coffee house, to hospital cafeterias.

  As a student at Hopkins, I did get to spend more time (albeit not a lot due to the rigorous academics) with my close childhood friends from Baltimore. I got to see Donna, my former primary nurse, and Diane, Dr. Kopits’s nurse practitioner, on a regular basis.

  At least once every few months, I talked to Dr. Kopits. I didn’t have any family in Baltimore, so he was my go-to person for an emergency. Obviously, he was a very busy man, so I didn’t call him for small things, but we stayed close. Every once in a while he would invite me over to dinner or we would meet for lunch. Because I had already started to feel the pains of early osteoarthritis associated with my skeletal dysplasia, Dr. Kopits gave me special permission to use the specialized heated pool at St. Joseph’s to help keep my joints in shape and limber.

  The summer between your first and second years of medical school, you’re strongly encouraged to work in a research lab. I wanted to be able to spend some time closer to home and also catch up with my close friends in Miami, who were now also in medical school. My good friend Brian helped me find a mentor at the University of Miami School of Medicine, and I spent six weeks doing research with him there. After that, I spent the rest of the summer at home with my parents in Orlando. I bought my first car, a Kia Sportage, and my family taught me how to drive in less than four weeks. I was going to need a car in the fall, as the apartment I would be moving to was no longer on campus, and public transportation was not an option. Although I failed my first road test, I passed on my second try.