Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2021 14:48:38 -0500
From: "Kryger, Meir" 

And mine:

Meir Kryger?s one-pager


?Call me Meir? with apologies to Herman Melville


I begin my tale in 1953. Our family had just arrived from Israel. My cousin
Henry brought me to elementary school to register me. He was the only person we
knew who spoke English. My parents (Holocaust survivors) and I (then 6 years
old) did not speak a word of English. The administrators in the school insisted
that my name be Marcel or Michel. I started to cry and blurted out, ?My name is
Meir?, in Hebrew.


A couple of years later I met for the first time, but separately Clive Seligman
(who also lived on the poor part of Ducharme), and Gerry Mazin, whose mother
made the world?s best chocolate cake. We were close throughout my early years, all
the way through OHS, McGill, and beyond. They were responsible for ?Canadianizing?
me.


I won?t go into any detail about my years at OHS, but I will say that I came out
with a love of art, writing, math science, and movies. The latter was because I
became friends with Bill Litwack.


I enrolled in McGill?s BSc MDCM program - an undergraduate then medical school
program. I had known I wanted to be a doctor (actually a neurosurgeon) since age
about 10. I realized that being a surgeon wasn?t for me because Dr. Wilder
Penfield (the world?s most famous neurosurgeon, who had operated on my father for
a subdural hematoma) said at one of our med school lectures ?You can?t be a
neurosurgeon if you can?t build a house?. I was clumsy and switched my interest to
breathing although as you will see later the brain played a prominent part in my
career. I spent 6 months in Paris as an exchange medical student.


Internship was in the south side of Chicago, where on my first day most of my
patients were heroin addicts being treated for blood infections from injecting
themselves. That is the year of other coincidences that changed the direction of
my life. My future wife, Barbara, was a student at Northwestern in the same
department (psychology) where Clive Seligman was doing grad work.


Then, back to McGill where I finished my internal medicine training and did a
year of fellowship in breathing disorders. During this time, I described the
first case of sleep apnea in North America. This made me instantly famous. After
I presented at my first sleep medicine meeting at Stanford in 1976, Dr. William
Dement, the world?s most famous sleep researcher said to me: ?My God, you?re just a
kid?. I was a kid. That was the beginning a beautiful friendship. Bill died 6
months ago . . . .


Then 3 years of pulmonary medicine/research fellowship at the University of
Colorado, where I also did research on sleep at high altitude and skied a lot.


Then, Barbara and I moved to Winnipeg where we planned to spend 3-4 years. We
ended up staying 29!. Our three children were born there, but all three
eventually went to American universities. And we followed, moving to Connecticut
(which ticked off our youngest son who was going to Yale where he majored in
Egyptology and Political Science ? you will never guess where he works). Our three
children are married: Clive and Gerry came to the weddings. We now have 3 dual
citizen grandchildren.


My career has been gratifying. I have probably treated more than 40,000 patients
with sleep disorders. If you want to get a sense of my career development and
the graying of my hair go here: https://www.krygerbooks.com/author


We love to travel (sabbaticals to Geneva, Palo Alto, London). We were a week
from being stuck in Bora Bora when the pandemic struck! We have had the luck of
having the opportunities to lecture all over the world.


I love science. My entire career was science-based.


I love to write. I have authored or edited more than 20 books (mostly for
doctors) and most recently a novel.
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Couldnt-Stay-Awake-ebook/dp/B08858N2WB/. I
actually finished the book 30 years ago. COVID convinced me it might be time to
publish it.


I love art. I have written a book about art.
https://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Art-artists-portrayed-dreams/dp/1729005381/


I love movies. This has come in handy during the pandemic. Thank you, Bill
Litwack.


As you can see OHS prepared me for the life.


meir