The author was born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, accurately characterized by Billy Joel in 1982. He shares his Lehigh Valley upbringing with Lee Iacocca, Mario Andretti, and WWF wrestling champion and cinematic presence "The Rock." He was told by his parents that he was raised into a family with "circus blood" (figure one below). This would eventually serve him well in his future career as a regional anesthesiologist. After leaving his hometown, he went on to Haverford College, a small, Quaker, liberal-arts college where he was a dual major in molecular biology and oils. He then put in the four years at University of Pennsylvania required in order to obtain an MD degree. Internship was at a great institution in a livable, fun city: Oregon Health Sciences in Portland. Residency followed at Wake Forest University where he performed 14 peripheral nerve blocks in three years and learned to speak slowly.
He went on to spend a year in Regional Anesthesia fellowship at the Virginia Mason Clinic precisely at the end of an epoch when reusable ground-glass loss of resistance syringes were yet to be extinct and giants still walked the earth. He left Seattle with a moderate caffeine addiction (as most do), an appropriate distaste for country club salmon, and four of the Ten Rules of Regional Anesthesia. Back to Winston Salem for a private practice but underpaid, non-partnership track job as was vogue in 1995, followed by an important and rewarding year on faculty at WFU OB-anesthesia, and then off to Stanford Anesthesiology for two years where he and his lovely wife were taught important life lessons by living in a place called California. He happily returned to Winston Salem to start a program in regional anesthesia at the invitation of then-chairman Raymond Roy. Winston Salem remains the current home of allnumbedup.
Interesting letters to the editor by the author:
Important reference to the film Spinal Tap in a scientific journal (.pdf)
Important use of Photoshop techniques in lieu of actual science (.pdf)
About Winston Salem, North Carolina:
In the loveliest town of all, where the houses were white and high and the elm trees were green and higher than the houses, where the front yards were wide and pleasant and the back yards were bushy and worth finding out about, where the streets sloped down to the stream and stream flowed quietly under the bridge, where the lawns ended in orchards and the orchards ended in fields and the fields ended in pastures and the pastures climbed the hill and disappeared over the top toward the wonderful wide sky, in this loveliest of towns Stuart stopped to get a drink of sarsaparilla.
Stuart Little, E.B. White, Harpers Collins Publishers, copyright 1945
CURRICULUM VITAE
J.C. Gerancher, M.D.
Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Wake Forest University School of Medicine
Medical Center Boulevard
Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27157
Telephone: (336) 716-4498
E-mail: jgeranch@wfubmc.edu
