On Monday I took my daughter swimming. About 45 minutes after we left the swimming pool I started having a severe allergic reaction. Over the next couple days it turned into the worst allergic attack I’ve ever had — a lot like a mild version of anaphylactic shock. I finally dragged myself into the university health center to get a steroid prescription to try to get this under control.

The sad thing was that almost by accident I learned that the psychiatrist I’d seen a lot as a student had died suddenly over the summer. Jack Scobey was only 43.

He died in a boating accident. He was vacationing on a houseboat and fell overboard sometime around midnight into waters that were 100-150 feet deep. Despite extensive search and rescue efforts, his body was never recovered.

After the death of my father, I started experiencing intermittent anxiety attacks, and I met with Scobey probably 50 times over the span of a couple years to treat them. Scobey was very nice but also very geek-ish (in the best possible sense of that term). He always spoke in this odd monotone and had a strange sense of humor.

My anxiety attacks eventually went away, and it had been five years since my final meeting with him, but it’s very odd to think of him as dead. He was way too young to die.

Related posts:

1. ALL YOUR BASE Meets Jack Chick