never too late

My mother has always been the feisty kind who insists on trying her best to right somebody's wrong when it comes to customer service. That is precisely how the three of us, including daddy, ended up back at the same old physician's office complex where they first started five years ago. No longer the hub of action that it was during the turf wars, it is quiet and the employees are not overworked and seem pleasant. The halls were mostly empty, and the doctor was on time and friendly. I recounted to him how one of the former practitioners there who was revered as a "saint" went off on me one time at the hospital when he was exhausted from being up 24/7. He is the very same one who cried when my uncle died of prostate cancer. They were both 54 at the time. That this shining example of what a doctor should be decided that I was safe to let it loose on might just have been a blessing. It helped me to see that we're really all in it together and the ones who really care will stop and talk with you about it. The brand new hot headed urologist (who eventually became a close friend) had me in tears one weekend while on call demanding something that wasn't on the stat list. But. He found me and apologized, and when he left it was with an understanding of just what technology he was working with. Very rudimentary dude, as in test tubes and water baths. Boil for x number of minutes and read on a spectrophotometer. Write on a piece of paper, carry to the chart. It sounds old school but that's how it was in 1977. Look Joe..you're in the book!

A writer, even then, I tended to do daily hand written journal entries, sometimes in a blank book, and others in the margins of self-help books. Were it not for the wisdom of Melody Beattie et al, I would never have realized that co-depency is a real thing and it can be acknowledged and healed. I remember the very first time I read the words "Life is hard." Such a simple truth, yet one that we spend ooodles and goodles of time railing against with much drama and whah-whah-whah. Like Sue says: It is what it is."

That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it ^j^