IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Scott Micklebank - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

There is a recently released film entitled "Three Identical Strangers" in which three boys discover themselves to be triplets who had been deliberately separated at birth and who were adopted by three different families. The fact of their separation is a devastating look at a lack of medical and social morality, but watching that movie the other day left me feeling particularly odd. I will now describe why.

I entered into seventh grade at Junior High School 190 in September of 1956. Everywhere I went, I found older students calling me "Scott". It was "Hi, Scott." or "Hey, Scott, how's it going?" or "Are you Scott Micklebank?" or something else like that. I thought it was some kind of practical joke, but it just kept going on and on.

Our family doctor ran his medical practice from his home. His living room was his waiting room and one day I was there, maybe for a checkup although I no longer recall for sure. While I was there, the doctor's daughter came down the stairs headed for the front door just as the doctor himself emerged from his office to call in his next patient. His daughter suddenly stopped and stared right at me and let out a slight gasp. Then she turned to her father and said "Dad, that isn't Scott, is it." to which he replied "No.". The girl stood there for another moment or so and then left.

I didn't ask my doctor, but it was beginning to sink in.

A few days later, my mother told me something odd. She had seen this boy on the street and thought it was me. She had walked right up to him and was about to speak when she realized that the boy she'd approached was NOT her son. It was NOT me.

It had become clear by then that I had a doppelganger in the neighborhood, but I never crossed paths with him. We never met. I went though seventh and eighth grades and then it was on to Brooklyn Technical High School which meant I vanished from the neighborhood scene.  

I have no reason to think that I was adopted. I firmly believe that I was raised by my biological parents, but the reactions of those three triplets in the movie seemed uncomfortably familiar.

My Third Heart Attack - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I had my third heart attack last month.

I took a stress test on June 13th and I had thought that all went well even though they wore me out. I was sent home and then a couple of hours later, I got a phone call from my cardiologist telling me that trouble was seen in the stress test results and that I needed to get to South Nassau Hospital right away. The next thing I know, I go from having two stents in my chest wall to having four.

In hindsight, I should have known something was wrong. I'd just seen this article on MSN whose title was something like "Ten Signs Of A Silent Heart Attack" and later realizing that I had seven of them.

There was some distress in my throat, there was some distress in my stomach but most profoundly, I was experiencing overwhelming fatigue. The odd thing which was a surprise to my cardiologist was that there had been no pain. Given what was going on, I should have been in some degree of pain, but I wasn't.

I do have to plead guilty to not following my own sage advice, but if you start experiencing any kind of medical anomaly, don't let it go.

See your doctor.