Counting Backwards from 100: My Life as an Anesthesiologist

Personal account of work related experiences, with reflections on childhood, education, career, and wisdom over a lifetime. Noteworthy thoughts from a successful, energetic, active anesthesiologist. Disclaimer: This book is based on the writer’s interpretation of his life and his career in medicine. Many names, places, events, and dates have been changed. Everything is seen through the prism of the writer’s memory. Nothing can be assumed to have actually happening as described. Jonathan Kelley was born in Boston, and educated at Exeter and Princeton, then Harvard Medical School, after a year teaching English in Cali, Colombia. He was a Navy doctor during Viet Nam. He spent the middle decades of his life working in a community hospital in Northern California. An anesthesiologist by training in his conventional career, he is a chef, pianist, and actor in his artistic life. He performed thirteen seasons between 2005 and 2018 as Mr. Cormack, in Spanish and English in a Christmas play, "Too Many Tamales," produced by the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts in Los Angeles. He portrays a desert hippie commune leader "Gary" in the 2019 movie, "Amor en 266 Millas,” and mental patient "Stan" in the 2014 film "Beauty In The Broken." In addition to playing the occasional piano gig, he cooks with coconuts, creates hats, baskets, and placemats from coconut palm fronds, and makes bowls from coconut shells. He bakes pies, and croissants flavored with coconut milk. Jonathan is re-inventing himself as a neon artist, first with a neon coconut palm tree, then with "Newgrange Neon Spiral," patterned after a rock-carved spiral in front of a 5,000 year old megalithic tomb in Ireland. Jonathan's wife is the lovely Puerto Rican actress Gloria Laino. They share a life together as richly contrasting as the flavors of Puerto Rican arroz con gandules served next to New England style cranberry sauce, all seasoned by their border collie, Wonder.