Solstice 2008

Solstice, 2008



Dear Ones:

Once again, I sit down to address you, one and all, and sum up our collective year, at least from my point of view. Once again, that point has shifted. I am writing from the Left Coast, our new home as of July. Woah, Nellie Belle, what happened there? Well therein lies a tale, of course. As I wrote to you last year, I had no inkling that all this would transpire. I was laboring along at the salt mines, running my little emergency department, when a patient complaint prompted a visit from our friends at the state hospital regulatory agency. The redoubtable harpies of infinite power descended, and found no merit to the complaint, but since they were there, they poked around in our processes, and found fault with our triage system. Now we had been through changes at the nursing director level three times in two years, and our manuals did not represent our practice, but Golly Day, we had only a handful of unattended deaths in the waiting room, and never made the national news. So what was all the fuss about? Anyway, the new CEO of our hospital, a star graduate of the Saddam School of Business and Personnel Management, reacted to the criticism by extending a mentoring hand to me personally, explaining that this failure of nursing practice was all my fault, and I had better fix it, or be replaced. I was inspired by his leadership and frank display of raw executive power. I fixed it, of course. But my heartfelt personal discussion with him about my longstanding commitment to the organization, and my feeling that we should work to settle differences without resorting to threats, apparently inspired him to respond with more threats, since he obviously had my undivided attention. I had to admire his rigorous empiricism, born, I am sure, of his training in outcomes-driven management, as taught at Saddam U. and all the other august institutions of business learning. He was clearly a deep thinker, a devotee of Spinoza, Hume, and Kant. I was Lassie, to his Rudd Weatherwax. In other words, his bitch. So I went out into the cold, cruel world, to see if I was even employable in my trade. I looked long and hard at a job in Springfield, OH, with a very nice group of docs, but some dreary hospitals, which were, after all, in Springfield. I was relieved, at least, to find that I was, in fact employable. That allowed me to drop off a resignation letter, while I continued to job shop. I jetted out with Catherine to the Seattle area (in a jet born in Seattle), and interviewed with another great group. We decided that location, location, location were the top three factors to consider. So we bit. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Admin types were completely dumbfounded that I would leave. I walked away from a leadership position, and a fair bit of cash, but I packed the last scraps of my self-esteem into a TSA-compliant Ziploc bag, and we moved on. We had a massive yard sale, divested ourselves of fifteen plus years of dust-collecting STUFF, packed the rest into PODS, and set forth in our car for the transcontinental tour. Everett came along for comic relief and referee duty. We visited grandkids enroute, stopped at Mt. Rushmore and the Custer Battlefield, coincidentally on the anniversary of the big event, and just enjoyed the slow passage of our enormous and wonderful country. We did manage to sell our house, for considerably less than fantasized, but we sold it. Quite the feat in this market, I now realize…our realtor calls to thank us almost daily.
Our new environs are fantastic. We have a rental house in Anacortes, Washington, on Fidalgo Island, in the San Juans. The kitchen is all dolled up for the little lady of the house, but the rest is pure Motel 6. However, we enjoy views of Mt. Baker, snow-capped year round, and sunsets over stunning views of the Puget Sound and the islands. A 220 acre park is less than a mile from here, with a 2.2 mile trail hike through Douglas Fir forests and sea cliffs, featuring bald eagles, seals and sea otters, to name a few of the critters we see frequently. So we are out nearly daily for a constitutional, and much more active, as a result. We are consequently too tired for sex, but you gotta take the yang with the yin. The town is pretty cosmopolitan, with a lot of cool retirees of worldly background, a great library, interesting restaurants, local theatre, the Cascades a half an hour to the east, Vancouver, BC 90 minutes north, and of course, Seattle the same distance to the south. People out here are so different, so considerate. If you use your blinker in traffic, they let you in. If you stop on the street and look lost, people ask if they can help you. It is astounding. The pace is slower, gentler, more accommodating. They recycle. They pick things up when they drop them. Catherine spends her days surfing real estate porn, and we are making offers on houses here and there, being patient for a good deal in this buyer’s market. The upset has definitely jolted us out of our former doldrums in a big way. So, to bottom-line it for you, Lassie ain’t comin’ home. Work is, well, work. If it was all that much fun, they would have named it “sex”, but they didn’t. They named it “work”. It is WERQ, the radio station where the music sucks, the volume is too high, and you can’t turn it off. My new group is really a great bunch of docs. It is a privilege to be part of the gang, for sure, because they are a really top-notch group. I hope someday to be a worthy member, but I have a lot of proving of myself to do. I will be happy when a couple of years go by, and I am not the FNG, looked at with that “show me” attitude that greets new guys everywhere. My old group has had some staffing difficulties since I left, so I continue to jet out to Delaware for a 5 night moonlighting stretch in the old ER on a monthly basis, staying at the Holiday Inn Express, and getting smarter every month. It pays the bills, and they miss me and like me there…what can I say? But I get to visit with the kids, do local chores, and torture myself with thoughts of what might have been. Meanwhile, the Saddam-ite CEO who caused my departure has resigned, to take a job at Rutgers. Sorry about THEIR luck, but good for Nanticoke, because he was a plague. Just after resigning, he got some sort of cancer, and had an eye cut out. Bummer. Word on the street is, “Don’t eff with Roberts, because it is bad ju-ju.” Wasn’t nothing to do with me, but all the same, don’t eff with Roberts. So, I have discovered, after all, it is not so bad to be just a line soldier, instead of an officer. I am only responsible for my own bowel and bladder control, and not everybody else’s. My own continence is responsibility enough. I do miss all the meetings. God, I miss the meetings. But I have learned a lot about making lemonade.
Meanwhile, we have all experienced the unbelievable change in the political landscape. We sat through October, biting our nails, waiting for the October Surprise promised by the attack dogs of right-wing radio, only there was no surprise. Except the finish. Are my eyes deceiving me, or is the president-elect a Kneegrow? In my lifetime? Unfreakingbelievable. I just waited for the Dems to screw up, in typical Democratic fashion, and hand the thing again to the guys who gave us Iraq, and soon, Iran. But no, it was those wascally Pubs who screwed up, sucking up to the hardest-line right-wingiest wackos, and bringing us that bubbly, big-breasted Maverick, whose grasp will never exceed her reach. I looked up ‘maverick’. Turns out it is a cow. But instead of more of the same-old same-old, the People actually found someone who seems to understand what to do, who values history more than personal gain, who might just lead our sorry asses into the 21st Century, kicking, screaming and dragging our heels as we may. I am still biting my nails, but that is an oral fixation I can’t give up. But I am starting to believe. This electoral process gives me some hope for our system and our people. I thought the deals were generally done in back rooms, and that candidates were pre-ordained. But the primary system, assaying the voice of the people, produced an unlikely winner for the Dems, one who would not have been pushed forward from the old smoke-filled room. And he trounced a war hero, for whom I had a good deal of respect, in a fair fight over ideas rather than personality. So it is theirs to fumble, but I am feeling just the slightest glimmer of hope that we are headed in a better direction. That is all good news for our many friends in the military. Nathanael has returned from Iraq, and is finishing his degree in exercise physiology at Salisbury University, in Maryland. He was notified to return to the Army for reactivation under the Individual Ready Reserve clause in his enlistment contract, but after some discussion, his 50% disability under the VA system convinced them he was not a good candidate for cannon fodder, and they released him once and for all. (Big collective sigh of relief!) He did his bit, got his Purple Heart, and somebody else needs to step up. Sorry that is still the case, since nobody should ever have stepped up to this misguided miscarriage of international relations, but nevertheless, Nat did his part, and more. He is doing well, and we are very proud of the fine young man he has become.
Catherine continues her efforts to comfort the returning veterans, with her Quilts of Valor Foundation. She has caused the delivery of over 20,000 quilts to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, with at least five times that number as the goal, and continues to make the news in her efforts. She is looking for corporate sponsorship, and is close to securing some, to make the goal achievable. She loves it loves it loves it out here, and I am most glad for her in our move, that she has taken so well to the new environment. Check out her website at www.QOVF.org and consider a year-end, tax-deductible donation.
Hannah is in her last semester of her last year at the Naval Academy, looking forward to her commissioning as an Ensign, and her assignment to the fleet. She may be in Japan or Hawaii soon, seeing the world at Gummint expense. She has continued her long distance running career, with a 100-mile run in the Shenandoah Mountains, called the “Grindstone 100.” Everett and I went, along with Margaret and friend Mike, as support crew, to watch her do a hundred miles on mountain trails, with 46,000 vertical feet, over 31 hours and 52 minutes. She did complete the run, and brother Everett did the last 21 miles with her, while sister Michele joined them for the last 14 miles. Her description of the event can be viewed as a reprint on my blog, www.bobchristopher.blogspot.com , or on the Grindstone 100 site. Good reading. She writes well, too. But it was an amazing effort on her part. Just consider being on your feet for 32 hours. Now climb 23000 feet up, and 23000 feet back down. And put 100.7 miles behind you, on rough mountain trails, more than half in the dark, with a headlight for lighting. Now you sort of get it. Harder than woodpecker lips, she is.
Everett is finishing his Junior year at St. John’s College, progressing well in his evolution from charming slacker, to erudite worldly and well-educated charming slacker. He has been rowing for the school team, and has a sixteen-foot oar in his twelve-foot room, engraved with his name, along with all the previous recipients, for being the rower of the year on the team. He is working at the Naval Academy Library, earning his spending cash, and has discovered the wonderful world of work. He continues to think about What To Do Afterwards, varying from Medicine, (discouraged by his parents) to Law, to the Foreign Service, but all things are possible. As long as they don’t involve more tuition payments from me. He has matured a great deal this year, and is now quite the worldly young man.
Michele is immersed in motherhood, still in Columbus, OH, with kids Jack, now three, and Lily, now almost two, occupying all of her time. We iChat with them frequently, and wish they were closer. Husband Eric is still flying some, administrating some, and has a good bit of time at home. Never enough, but better than when he was only a line pilot.
Not much has changed with ER life, even with the translocation. The demographics are a bit different, but the complaints remain the same. Little chubby picture-of-health Hispanic infants still “cry too much”, and are brought for a total body workup. People who ingest meth and coke and heroin still insist that it must be lab error, or sidestream smoke that lit up their urine drug screen in all measured categories. Not that it was tough to tell. The black teeth, showing only as black circles in red, dry gums, looking like a stockade fence burned over in a prairie fire, are hard to explain otherwise. “Oh, my last pregnancy did that to my teeth.” they will say. Maybe so, but the product of that last pregnancy is pinging around the exam room like a pinball as we speak, dismantling furniture, and grunting in Neolithic proto-language, so the teeth are the least of our collective worries. “He has Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,” they say knowingly. And so they have a lifetime ticket to the state-funded, all-you-can-eat Ritalin party going on at their house. The kid ain’t getting his meds, I can tell you for sure. His urine is clean as the driven snow, sidestream smoke notwithstanding. He must not have inhaled…
What remains truly amazing, and apparently unchanging from coast to coast, is this observation: Every medical condition known to modern medicine has one solution, and it is really all you need to know as an ER Doc. Now the name of this amazing agent is not the answer to one single Board of Medical Examiners question, and is not anywhere revealed in the published literature as the cure-all it truly is. Sounds like a conspiracy by the Medico-Pharmaco-Industrial Complex to deprive the suffering public of a miracle cure, if you ask me. But ask almost any patient what is the cure for their condition, and the answer is Percocet. Even Rush Limbaugh knows that. Everybody knows that. So why do ER Docs not know that? Well they do, but it doesn’t get them a passing score on the Boards to know that. It only gives them top scores on the patient satisfaction surveys. But every human on earth apparently suffers from insufficient Percocet levels in the blood, and if we could only fix that, all would be well. I wasted a lot of time in medical school, learning all the rest of it. Should have jumped to the Cliff Notes, instead, and partied the rest of the time.
I did achieve a momentary connection with national news, just after my arrival here. You may or may not have remarked on yet another mass shooting, this one in our neighborhood. A local psychotic fellow was released by the mental health system, stole a gun, and went on a rampage, killing 6, including a really lovely female police officer who had befriended him, and wounding a couple of others. I was on duty, and took care of one of the wounded. Hannah actually called me that day and asked if I had heard about the shooting, so I know it made the news briefly. My moment of fame, and I hardly had time to realize that was it. I was hustled back to standard-issue anonymity again as fast as you can say “mass murderer--details at eleven.”
I pause to note the passing of a few notables from our midst, to wit: William F. Buckley, and George Carlin, wordsmiths each for better or worse, along with Arthur C. Clarke, who made me think big thoughts. I met Ed Hillary in Nepal, and he was always an inspiration to me, but is gone now. Paul Newman was the epitome of cool, and is now even cooler, I guess. So long also to Studs Terkel with whom I once had lunch, Sunny von Bulow, Eddy Arnold, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, survivor of the Gulag, Dith Pran, survivor of Cambodia’s Killing Fields, and Isaac Hayes. He was a complicated man, and no one understands him, ‘cept his woman. And sad farewell to Antonio Caldarella, Catherine’s father, WWII Vet, and member of the “greatest generation.”
And so, dear friends and usetobes, wannabes, gonnabes and essobees, let us circle our wagons again against the darkness, waiting for the 47 degree wobble of our blue orb, to bring us back to long warm days and short, torrid nights. Perhaps we already see a glimmer of light and understanding beginning to show, even as we spin into this dark solstice in uncertain times. There will almost surely be a 47 degree wobble in the markets too, collective human behavior being just as cyclic as the solar system, only not as reliable. Our 201-Ks will again become 401-Ks, our houses will again become worth more than our mortgages, and we will meanwhile rediscover home cooking, and the value of leftovers, to the benefit of our waistlines. We look forward to being welcomed back to the community of nations as partners, and as inspirers, and look back to the example of the “greatest generation,” for how our sacrifices and hard work will make our world better, safer, and cleaner. So pull out those iPod earphones, put away that Blackberry, push back from that flat screen, and gather your loved ones around, tell stories of how it was, listen to how it might be, and dream together of how to make that happen.

Cheers, best, love, like, bemused indifference, or whatever suits,