Sunday,
June 9, 2002
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mural in Hyde Park
"No lesson seems to be so deeply
inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts.
If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians,
nothing is innocent: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe. They
all require to have their strong wine diluted by a very large admixture
of insipid common sense." [Very timely quote, I think. For me and the world.] It is not enough to be happy; it is necessary, in addition, that others not be. |
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routine madness I need one of my routine walks. I tell SuRu I'll call at 7:45 and I do. She isn't quite ready. I want to get a walk before it's too hot or too late. I need to spend time with Mom and I need to do some work on this paper I have to have drafted on Wednesday. She calls back, ready, at a little after eight and the entire urban adventurers head out into the neighborhood. We walk down to 42nd, back to Upper Crust for coffee and a snack and home. I shower and head for the hospital. It's routine now. I feel guilty when I'm not there. I stopped by last night after FFP and I went to dinner at our club and tried to get her to settle down and go to sleep. She was rehashing decades old scores with her father, dead for over forty years. The steroids? The Dilaudid?
Let me tell you...I don't like hospitals. I hate that I recognize so many faces of the staff now at Seton North West. I hate the frustration I feel when any question requires that the practitioner wade through a thick hand-written binder (can you say ERROR PRONE??). I hate that each day's nursing staff decides to change the care or lack thereof. I hate that I can't help my mother and that the medicos can't either and that they flit by with their platitudes and their hefty charge to Medicare and insurance. I must calm myself with a lot of effort. I must recognize that no one gets great medical care in spite of all that's available. It's just one more risk of our modern life. We could have better care but it would mean that we would have to open medical records to patients, somehow establish continuity of care that would allow doctors to actually be interchangeable not just assume it on weekends. That we would have to tell patients enough and not be afraid of suits. It won't happen during this episode or my lifetime. He who is lucky enough to stay clear of medicine wins doubly.
FFP takes me to brunch and then dinner in between hospital visits. The taste of good food raises my spirits. I worry about my dad. He went to MacDonald's when I spelled him for lunch and refused my offer for a decent meal tonight. He is sad and frustrated, I think. He needs more of a break than he will agree to take.
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180
JUST
TYPING