Edward A. Drum MD

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About: Edward A. Drum MD, Capt. USNR-ret

I retired from the US Navy as the Wing Flight Surgeon for EA-6B Prowlers at Whidbey Island, Naval Air Station. These birds do electronic warfare, jamming enemy electronic systems.

While in the solo private practice of medicine, government control of every aspect of care destroyed economic feasibility. Meanwhile I found myself telling "sea stories" from prior Naval service as a ship’s physician. At age forty, I sold my solo family practice to study aerospace medicine at Naval Aviation Medical Institute (NAMI) in Pensacola Fl. This included learning to fly the Navy way hence exciting and demanding. I loved naval aviation, the aviation community and flying the world. My Navy career began during the doctor draft as the ship's physician during the Vietnam era. The general draft was discontinued, but the doctor draft remained and required service. Therefore: "Aye, Aye then haze grey and away".

As a young man, I worked in the lumber mills and as a line man for our family owned Telephone company.. Granddad, Lee Bolles owned this small company in McCleary, WA and was voted mayor. The town is named after the owner of the lumber mill. Hope & success in this town was defined by becoming a supervisor in the mill, truly a one horse town in a rain forest. I worked the dry chain and door sander. The mill finally closed and surprisingly the town is still there.

As a teenage line man for the telephone company I replaced a cross arm on a 70 foot telephone pole spanning a freeway as granddad performed as my grunt man wisely advising me. This experience cured me of remaining a telephone man. It however taught me the incredible value of mastering a trade.

Off to college for a BS, BA in international studies & MD from Loyola Stritch Medical School, Chicago.. Mom worked for the telephone company as well and contributed most of her income to support my education. I helped with summer jobs. She launched my inquisitive nature and allowed me to sail a small sailboat boat from Olympia to Lake Washington via the Ballard locks over a four day passage.

“Quarantine Access” began with many questions. Why was the AIDS epidemic not being treated as an epidemic? Why was there a plethora of misinformation in controlling AIDS while political players and agencies encouraged the epidemic! This prompted the beginning of a first book to explain this phenomenon. "Quarantine Access" is code and written as a Historic Novel, written to carry the audience while avoiding too much doctor talk. My wife, Rita discovered the manuscript in a cardboard box under a stairwell. I had to rewrite it many times and she is a literary scholar that reignited my fire.

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