Rita Hayworth and Transcendence

"Transference" meaning

Oh, Let Me Tell You About It!

On November 14, 2011, Alan and I sat in Wisconsins's Lambeau field, five seats above the 40 yard line, watching the Green Bay Packers play Minnesota. On the short flight out from Chicago we got a taste of just how internationally popular the Packers are...there was one woman from Australia who'd been following them since she was twelve and two men from Ontario. In our tour group on Sunday (they run tours every fifteen minutes) we had people from Brazil as well as from Texas, California, Arkansas, Oregon and Alaska.

We bought long silk underwear from the Olympia REI but told each other we'd resist buying anything obviously "Packers". We're just not "that way". Not us. We're grown ups, after all. We love the team, not the team's packaging. So,God. Give us a break.

On Sunday we hit Lambeau's gift shop and looked around. We pretended for awhile, then spent two hundred dollars on the green and gold. And that was just inside. The next day, before the game, we bought the really gauche stuff. Beads. Fluffy ropey neck things. A shirt for Alan that read .......I can't remember exactly what it read. Ask him. He'll tell you. Alan had a heck of a time figuring out which player's jersey to buy...should he buy a jersey with Woodsman's name on it? Or Donald Driver's? He thought, he thought. Finally, after airing his innermost confusion to one of the elderly men working in the gift shop, he decided on Driver, because Driver writes children's books. If any of you out there want Alan to buy your shirt, start writing for the little one's. Melts his heart.

Our tour took us through the tunnel (accompanied by loud music and taped roars of the fans) which the Packer's actually come out onto the field through. Big moment. We were taken above the field to one of the luxurious box seats where we could look down over everything. Another big moment. It was Veteran's Day Weekend and, during the game's intermission, we were asked to lean over, grab the plastic bag fastened onto every seat, grab the big red, white or blue cardboard mask and put it over our faces when signalled to by the sideline TV people. When we completed our paper trick, the entire stadium turned into a red, white and blue flag-like sign that read "Thank You, Military!" So THAT'S how they do that. After tail-gaiting with open trunks full of nearly every kind of liquor and beer on the market, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds (there were something like 78,000 people in the stadium that evening) of significantly drunk people trying to get the eye holes in those masks to slide on up to meet their eyes.....major parts of the stadium's words were not only nearly unreadable but pre-tt-y darn swervy ..... but hey - - there were no fights, no accidents, no police were called, and Packers sat next to Vikings in relative harmony. I myself (don't you hate it when somebody says "I, myself" - - like, who else would "I" be? And yet I feel compelled to say it:) - I, myself, sat next to a Viking. And it was fun. It made things particularly fun, when the game ended and we won, 45-7. We smashed that Minnesota team right into the next hemosphere.

Yeah.

And the food. Oh,the food. Yes. Where the only green vegetable we saw for three days was a chunk of iceberg lettuce. Where they even butter the butter. Where they fry the cheese. Where they serve up something called cheese curdles. Where the burger, the brat and the cheeseburger are the only offerings on the menu even at the Hyatt Hotel, where we stayed. Where the women are as large as the men and you'd be too. Where we filled up on eggs, bacon, sausages, sweet rolls, sweet cakes and sweet cream in the morning. Where we ate burgers for dinner every night. Where even Alan (Alan!) ordered a quesadilla just to get to the iceberg lettuce. I never thought I would see him eat iceberg, and yet he did; wolfed it right down. Good God almighty. Shows what deprivation can do to a man. Makes 'em run for the iceberg. My only regret? That I never had me a brat. Damn. I was THERE. It's very sad to look at yourself in the mirror once you're back on the island and know you've just come from Wisconsin and you didn't eat a brat. Brings on a feeling kind of like a mix between shame and regret. Shoulda had a brat.

And the Packers, whom we went to see play? Oh yeah. There are a whole bunch of things I thought I'd rather see...the New York ballet, The Met opera, even Oregon's Shakespeare festival....but this team, these Packers....are really something. They are part machine and part ballet. They ARE a team. They are beautiful. They are beautiful to watch. Everyone who knows me said something like, "YOU? YOU? Are going to see a team play......FOOTBALL? Do you.....KNOW? Anything ABOUT....FOOTBALL? .....KAY?" And the answer to all these questions is yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. And it was worth it all. And I DO happen to know at least...SOME...about football. And when Alan walked into the room where Lambeau keeps the Lombardi trophies...and when I watched his face as we walked out on the field....and when I watched the Packer's fans and the Packer's themselves, the community pride for this team they OWN.... you know, it's just one of those things. It was beautiful to behold. HE was beautiful to behold. And my heart was full.

So here we are back home and it's hard to believe we were ever there. "Human kind," said T.S. Eliot," can not bear too much reality." I suppose three days was about all we could bear and about all we really could take in, realistically, of Wisconsin, brat or no brat. The Packers have played two or three more games since we were there and they've won each game and Alan is now hoping they will lose one before the play-offs. I've been trained to listen to the worst of childhood trauma, but I haven't been trained to go through the psychological distress of my favorite team losing. I know it comes with sports, it comes with the game, but I'm new to all this, but I'm a baby, I'm a novice and I don't have my big girl boots on yet. I don't want them to lose, ever.

Meanwhile, life goes on. Angela called to say that Aleister is now up to class level in all his classes. His English instructor did complain to Aleister about his latest paper, though. He told Aleister that he needs to know "his audience". The assignment was to "write about your worst day". The first of Aleister's sentence for that paper went like this, "The worst day of my life, Oh, let me tell you about it...." and the instructor didn't enjoy the "looseness", he said it needed to be more "academic". So. I know about all of this. I know about "voice" and "audience" and "academic" writing and technical writing. I also know I used to be hired to teach English instructors to "write with a voice," at Centrum in Port Townsend. And I know it took every trick in the book to loosen those teachers up. l know you have to know the rules but I don't know which comes first, the voice and then the rules or the rules and then the voice. I think whichever comes first naturally, needs to be well validated. Anyway, I love that, "Oh, let me tell you about it!" and so I am going to title this blog with those words. I love the looseness and the vibrancy and the enthusiasm, especially for something awful, like the "worst day of my life". If that voice and that vibrancy is what he's using to describe the worst day of his life, I sure do want to know what the kiddo is going to say about his best.

BUT REALLY, IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE!

I turned my life around when I met Alan. Baby steps, sure, but even so, steps. I became a person who reads food labels and "due dates", or whatever one calls those stamped dates on food products which signify it might be best if you stopped eating said products after October, 2009. I follow rules for recycling (yes to plastic dairy tubs, no lids,) yes to plastic bottles (with caps on).

I no longer comb,brush or pick my hair. There should be a foot note here but I'm not going to bother. I will tell you, though, I do get lots of complements.

Go figure.

In order to assure my children and the people who may still love me out there in Bremerton-Land and beyond, I still am hell on wheels in a car and I still eat lots of canned peas when Alan's not looking. If canned peas have a due date, I do not pat any attention whatsoever.

I don't want to make them feel bad.

Back again to the Life Changes.I have become a woman who flies to New Jersey and New York and, when she (I) goes to New York, she always (twice) goes to see a Broadway play. So far (two trips), I've seen MEMPHIS and, last week, Sondheim's FOLLIES, with Bernadette Peters. To hear Ms. Peters sing "Losing My Mind" was rapture........to hear the actress who sang "Broadway Baby," an older woman playing a Jewish cleaning woman who'd seen show after show go by in the theatre where she worked.....was rapturiously magnificent.

As good even as eating Junior's cheesecake and letting it melt all over my tongue and into my throat and not swallowing until I absolutly positively had to.

That's what I'm talkin' about.

We first flew in to New Jersey where we stayed with Alan's sister Fran and brother-in-law, Leo. Once again, they generously opened up their house to us, including feeding us the best breakfasts - something chocolate and vanilla called Bobka, oh and something Fran cooked called Noodle Kuchen ohmygod it was SO good - - I ate my own piece and then I turned to Leo and ate his piece as well. For desert. Because, , with this kind of food, there is never enough. As one of the actors shouts out in the wonderful film about food in the film "The Big Night!" "There is NEVER enough! There is only NOT enough!"

Which is how I felt about Fran's kuchen. If I had been willing to drop the socialbility and reveal the fathomless level of my pure food-passion and utter selfishness which occurred to me both at the same time in one singular moment, I would have grabbed the entire kuchen, jammed it under my arm like a football player and run out of the house and onto the street down the street, the way my Grandfather did in North Dakota on Thanksgiving on some sunny, grisly day in the 1950's.

Leo spent time showing me books which revealed the differences between New York NOW and New York THEN (early 1900's)....hard to believe. Hard to believe what could be done back then with a penny, a nickle, a dime, hey, let's all go back and buy cars, houses, CANDY!

We could not find Alan's camera while in New Jersey so we have no pictures from Fran and Leo's. There are some pics from last May on my blog but none of Leo, which I regret. We found the camera on the second day of Alan's reunion and I'll try to get a few pictures into this blog. One will be of one of Alan's fraternity "brother's" and dearest friends, a guy named Byrde (not his real name but back then hardly anyone went by their real name and the nicknames stuck) and his sweet (but spicy) wife Alice, and Alan and me. We were eating desert after our meal at a Jersey place called Bogart's. Here we are, having eaten a scrumptous Jersey meal:

And of course, the reunion of the Something Something Chi's - - I obviously don't remember and Alan isn't here to give me the information. The college was Mammouth college in New Jersey and I think I am correct in saying that Alan's fraternity was the.....most raucous, most creatively raucous, most organically, orgasically raucous, psychologically,raucous, disgustingly raucous fraternity......ever experienced up to that point (1964 - 69??)--especially on such a beautiful...distinguished and historically famous, even, college on the East Coast. Later, I believe the college shut this particular fraternity down, but NOT before the lads made plenty of videos of themselves, which they called "The Monkey Tapes".

Here are Alan and his dear friend Barry, who used to sit around with Bruce Springsteen (sp?) and play guitar at Alan and Barry's place. Barry went on to form a band of his own.



To view the Monkey Tapes which could be torture to many brain or digestive systems - - and then to look around the room and see so many judges and attorneys and scientists and teachers, coaches, musicians, teachers, admen, businessmen, absoutly proves the old cliche about the acorn never falling "that far from the tree". Because these guys, in their late teens and early twenties, rolled miles and miles away from their tree .....and NOW look at them. They rolled right back.

This is Alan and Dr. Peter, an electrical engineer. They got that gulpy thing going in their throat when they hugged goodby.



So. Politics? Money? Didn't matter. What mattered was the love. You could hear it in the voices. That little gulpy thing that happens in a man's voice when hr's trying to hold the tears in but he just can't manage it and it starts spilling out like globs of honey.......globs of honey from big ol' love holds and crunches that started out as mere male pats on the back.....

To watch Alan go through that was great fun. Or maybe not "fun", exactly, so much as that feeling you get when you know you are witnessing a rare dose of intimacy and tenderness. More like that.

The reunion was held at Sal's house; Sal,who wrote the commercials, "I Can't Believe I Ate the WHOLE Thing" and "That'sa Some Spicy Meat Ball!" as well as hundreds more. Yup, they live in a mansion. Yup, with an elevator. With so much food you couldn't count it all. With the meatballs and the sausage and the pizza and the salads and the breads and the morning fruit and bagels and lox and egg dishes and ohmyGod I can't remember - and a HUGE cake with a frosting-photo-copy of the OLD Mammoth College on top and yes there was lots of alcohol and nope, not one person got drunk. Not ONE.

And they called a couple of guys up who, due to force of circumstance, couldn't attend. I'm changing names here......."Did you hear about Bobby? Ah, God, it's terrible, it's a shame, and that it should happen to him, and then there's Jonesy from New Mexico, can you believe that? God, I always loved him, hey, let's go call him, let's go call him right now, do you think it'd make make him feel better or worse if we called him? Better? Yeah? Worse? You think so? Jesus, I don't know, I just can't stand it, my wife says I wouldn't know a feeling if you pulled it out a my ass, but I can't stop thinking about him, I gotta call him, come on, life's too short, anyone else with me? You? AlRIGHT! You TOO? Oh, Christ, we gonna be on the phone all night here! Yeah,yeah, sure, but it's something we got to do! We GOT to, right? Don't we got to? We love him,we got to TELL him that! SHOW him that! If he cries, he cries, hell, I'M gonna cry, I'll tell you THAT right now! Let's go! We'll do a conference call,lots of phones around here, so........okay, let's go this is what you do when you love somebody and they're hurtin' and they're....you know, they're alone...huh? Don'cha think? This is what'cha do, because, really, it's all about love!"

BEING WRONG AND BEING ME

"Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we
are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf."
- William James, "The Will To Believe"


In reading a fascinating book, part philosophy, part psychology, titled BEING WRONG, ADVENTURES IN THE MARGIN OF ERROR by Kaththryn Schulz, I find I am experiencing the phenomena of being "Me" in an entirely new way. If, thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world and if the capacity to err is actually a sign of intellectual superiority, crucial to human cognition (that is, if we can freely acknowledge our errors and go on), and if, indeed, there is actually very little we can one hundred per cent be right about....then I am an absolutley fabulous,fabulous person.

Because I am wrong.....or at least I0 make lusciously hearty errors....at LEAST once or twice a day.

Probably more.

I was wrong when I approached the line of men at the automobile place and said, quite audibly, "I don't know what to do." I was wrong when I backed up out of my narrow garage on the first day I purchased it....and put a dent and a scrape on its shiny red surface.

I was wrong when I kissed Aleister in front of a group of boys his own age beneath the Victoria Secret's new bosom laden sign.

I was wrong when I didn't add butter to the oil.

I was wrong when I machine washed the new red top that said "Dry Clean Only".

I was wrong when I took the fashion magazine's advice and began going to bed minutes after having washed my hair. Ahhhh-chooo.

This last not-very-interesting but somewhat telling list all occurred within a week. But there's more. Much, much more.

Each time I claim to know something, I am essentially saying that I am not wrong. And if I want to contend with the (very real) possibility that I COULD be wrong, then the idea of knowledge only serves me so far. I must also examine my belief system, which is mostly subjective, even if I think it is not. And we are all full of beliefs, both conscious (_____________ are nutjobs) and unconsious (the table will hold my plate of food)....well, see I am probably now wrong for going on and on in such a way that interests me but not likely anybody else.

For the past three weeks I have been eating two Madeleine cookies for breakfast along with one cup of coffee. While this is in no way illegal, nor is it anybody else's business, I have an idea that a nutritionist might shudder and might even find me to be.........wrong. Bananas are the only fruit I eat. I have fallen in love with ginger beer. I have lost ten pounds. That is good, but WHY is it good? Is it good because I get complements? Eating like I do? Is it right? No, it's wrong. Am I out of my mind? No, I am very much IN my mind. In fact, one might say I live much more inside my mind than I really SHOULD.

Alan says I am sedentary.
I know what he's saying.
He's saying I'm wrong.
To be sedentary is wrong.


Perhaps I'm simply a tad rebellious. One of the first words all of us learn is: no. It is soon followed (or, less often, preceded) by "yes". But, ueually, "no" comes first.

When my parents used to tell me to do something I would start, slowly, slowly, oh ever so slowly, to back up until I was about one or two feet away.... at which point I would yell, "I Will and I Will and I WON'T"........at which point I'd run like hell.

The author Philip Gourevitch writes, "One doesn't write what one means to write, one writes what one CAN write." See, this a variant on the kind of erring I do every day. I decided to write a blog on how fabulous I am because of how many errors I make every single day (read: hour) of my life and here I am, discussing matters of childhood and writing.

Oopsie. Wrong again.

HOW TO BUY A USED CAR

Exhaust yourself by driving around for three hours in your old car. The car you have come to hate. By this time you are in the mind frame of "any car will do." You are supple, vacant, Zen-like in your approach to how the river of life flows. Drive to West Hills Honda and park your Volkswagen Beetle. The one you can't handle. The one you've had for four years and you still can't figure out where the front or back begins or ends. In other words, you are zoned out and It Is Time.

Struggle to get out of the car, grab your purse and limp up the hill to a line of four young men who look like they would eat wombat balls if only you would meet one of their eyes. You look at one of them and say, "I don't know how to do this."

They positively shiver in delight.

Really. You can feel the ground move.

You know you have made, by this time, possibly four or five big mistakes while telling the truth. You don't know how to do this. Life no longer has any room for truth. Life is a game, damn it, when will you LEARN this?

One man, name of Frank, herds you away from the rest. Frank wears thick glasses and is not, like the rest of the guys, sweating. He says, "It's easy!" He doesn't yet know what it is I want to do, and it's easy. I like his attitude, kind of devil-may-care. Kind of Mary Poppins Meets Harpo Marx. Heido Ho! It's Easy!

We go inside and sit down at Frank's desk. He wants to know what I do for a living. I tell him I'm a psychologist. Frank's major interest seems to be Frank. He leans back in his chair, gathering some kind of points. "Well, now," he says, "roll your chair over here," and tell me what you can tell about me."

"You suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder," I say. "Yep, sure do!" he says, happily. "You're divorced, and you have one or two children," I say. "One," he says, "Oh boy, you're good," he says. "You drink too much," I say. "Hey," he frowns," how do you know that?" "I can smell it on your breath, Frank," I say.

He straightens up. "I'll have to watch that," he says. "Now. What can I do for you?"

"I want to trade in my 2007 red Volkswagen Beetle," I say. "For something inexpensive like a Kia or a Hundea."

Frank happily slaps one of the perfectly placed pieces of paper on his desk. "We can DO that!" He says. "We can DO that! Come on and let's go find some Kias and Hundeas for you to look at and drive! You're gonna love this!"

Frank's small eyes are blinking fast. He may have some kind of tic that I missed mentioning, I don't know. He certainly does have an ability to go from down to up in a New York second, all that money.

We walk around a big curve and end up in Kia and Hunda-ville. I climb inside a cool looking jet black Kia. It's nice Chic. The motor sounds a little fast. I drive it around the area and decide against it. I love the look but am sorry about the motor sound. "I don't think so, Frank," I say.

"Oh, we've got LOTS of cars," Frank says.
"I know you do, Frank, I looked them up on the computer, last night." He didn't seem to cotton to this information, I don't know why. I drove the Hundea but the wheel was a bit jerky and I didn't like it as much as I thought I would, either. As we were parking the Hundea my eyes lit on a nice looking red car. Too long? Too sleek for the likes of me?

A 2010 Nissan. With my trade I could have it for $4,000. I drove it around, the motor sounded good, it felt right, I liked it. What more should I know? "I'll take it," I said.

"I'll take it," I said.

And so I did.

After an hour and a half of signing forms which is one of the things I most hate in life (you're credit is excellent, your mileage is low so we'll knock off...., do you want the this, do you want the that, you have one more year of waranty left on this Nissan....), I paid my money and drove it home.


Later, I called Alan and said "I bought a car.
Silence.
"A 2010 Nissan."
Silence, then, "Did you ask questions about it?"
"You mean about the price?"
"No, I mean about who owned it before?"...."Or.....anything?"
"Well, the people who owned it before didn't want it anymore and so they took it to West Hills and traded it in."
Silence. Then,"Good luck."
"What?"
"I said 'Good luck'."

It's not easy being me. It's not easy being a car that belongs to me. How I ever even got to the ripe old age I am sometime just floors me. How I ever made my way into the professional world and delivered all those lectures I used to deliver and taught all those classes around the U.S. and got all those degrees......I mean, I was the same me then as I am now....how the hell did I do it?

"And I shall easy to be", said Emerson. Well, yeah, it's pretty easy to be me, too, or at least it feels like it, until I get next to other people and they explain to me the Right way to do things, or, indeed the Only way to do things.....but if it really were the ONLY way, then I wouldn't really BE here, would I? My father used to suggest that all of this (he's wave his arms) was just a dream, HIS dream, as a matter of fact, and that I was simply a part of his dream. It was only when he died that I could truly let my breathe completely go (I was thirty-four by then) and absolutly know down deep inside that he had NOT constructed me through his dreams. I was me. I existed all by myself.

And so does that beautiful 2010 red Nissan sitting down in my garage. I know where it's front is. I know where's back is. I know where it's sides are. It's longer than the Beetle was but at least I CAN SEE WHERE I BEGIN AND END.

Which is a good thing.

Please, y'all. PLEASE. Wish me good luck.

KEEP ON SWINGING

It's been a year, folks. One year this weekend. One year since I actually cancelled patients (oh my god Loss of income, big irritation to patients, lots of rescheduling, something I never do)....to meet this "Island Man" named Alan. With one "L". And he was late due to traffic. And he was tall, due to genetics. And I was so nervous I still don't remember one word I said. What's to say? "Hi, I'm Kay, I love hot dogs and Tolstoy and Woody Allen and I'd rather read books than travel and I'm only slightly koo-koo and I'm always thinking about the worst that could happen and I'd love to see you with your shirt off......." ???? !!!!

Oh, God. Those Match.com things are SO difficult. I don't have any idea what he said, either. He'd worked for the state in energy for twenty-four years but I thought he told me he'd worked in salmon.I went around telling everybody he worked in salmon. He was sixty-five, near sixty-six. I was sixty-four, never sixty-five.

At lunch's end, he bent down to kiss me and I blushed and he said, "Oh, look at you! You blushed! Just like a little furry thing!"

I had to get back to see a four o'clock patient. But I couldn't find my car.

We've seen each other every single weekend since. Every. Single. Weekend. Since.

In June of this year, we became spiritually tied to each other (married) and we wear rings on our wedding hands. They are like us. Beautiful. Well, handsome and beautiful. Anyway, this picture is taken not long ago at the Sawatdy Thai which is the first the first middle-of-the first-weekend restaurant we ever frequented. Something about spice.

The above picture was taken in my oldest daughter Kelly's yard. Alan had a conference nearby and off we flew. Kelly, whom I raised from the time she was...ten? eleven? along with her sister Erin, are my daughters, and I love them both immensely. There are many many pictures taken at Kelly's which, though adorable, are simply not fit for public viewing. Dancing, dancing, dancing to the music. Kelly, her friend Carol and me....and, of course, Alan, who won not one, but two, dancing contests, just like John Travolta in Saturday Night Live, when he was young. Jumped up, twirled around, landed in the splits, used one arm to spring himself back up and....you get the picture.Whew, I would have loved to have been there. Well, we went to the market, brought back food and ate. California watermelon, berries, avacados, string beans, raspberries, strawberries, CORNDOGS, salmon, chicken, oh my god, we ate, we ate, and we danced it off each night.

It's been one slam-dunk of a summer. Watch the sun go down at Alan's sweetheart of a bungalow with it's straight-across view of Mount Rainier. Dining with dear, dear friends. Tolerance up, expectations down. Learning each other. Laughing. Loving each other's familles and friends. Knowing we don't have limitless prospects but that even makes it better, somehow. We'll keep our heads down. We'll keep our eyes on the ball. And we'll keep on kissing and swinging.

Hospitals? Get DOWN With Your Bad Voice!

Well, it's nearly two weeks since I had the fifteen inch medical implement surgically removed at the U. of W. hospital. I was scheduled for a one day (in and out) visit (don't you love the euphemisms?), but I got to thinking -- gee, that's a long implement to give such little attention to.....what would Eugene O'Neil have to say? Surely he would trot out his famous statement and bellow it to the skies: "Attention muct be paid?!" After all, it was this very instrument that, (unbeknownst to me, because I didn't know it was in there until 2-8-11) led me to relocate to Bainbridge Island where I would be able to walk nearly everywhere I needed to go because car seats where the worst, left me buying six chairs plus two medical chairs my neurologist swore by (and I swore AT), brought me to a year in rehab, six months in acupuncture, chiropractic practice, medical hypnosis, rounds of inner and outer botox, shots in my spine, pain clinics dispensing morphine and oxycodone.......and all I get is an in and outie? No, no, no, no, no. By this time, I was afraid. I was uneasy. A couple times before this surgery my blood pressure had zoomed to zero during day surgeries.

And yet.....I was afraid of my doctor. Oy! My doctor! She is golden, she is the queen of the department at the University Hospital, she's one of those women who was once the smartest girls in those adolescent books about...well, smart girls. You need to tie a knot and there's nothing around but broom and a horse? Use the horse to tie the knot and the horse to ride out on. Dummy. She has a no-nonsense approach, not much of a bedside manner at all: "Hello, I'm Dr. ____________, I'll be seeing you next week to remove the ____________." She doesn't waste a word. Or a smile. Other doctors worship her. "Oh, Dr. _________ is doing the surgery? Oh, my God, you can't do better than that!"

I CAN'T?
Then I want her for longer then an in & outie!

"You've got to be your own best advocate," said Alan. "Stand up for yourself. You're paying, she's doing her work. Tell her what you want. Use plain English. Tell her what you want and tell her why you want it. Be firm. Nice, but firm. All she can say is 'No', but you've got to give her a chance to say 'Yes'. You can do this. Just everybody else seems to worship her doesn't mean that you have to worship her. Now, get in there and Go for it."

What does he think this is, football?

There are about five things in my life that I'm really proud of and not one of them has anything to do with being firm with doctors. Well, there was the time at Virginia Mason when the doctor wouldn't examine me because, she said, that wasn't part of what she did, and I looked at her and said, "Okay. You're the doctor here. I'm you patient. I'm going to pull down my pants. See? See me pulling down my pants? Now, YOU, as my DOCTOR, are going to walk up behind me, closer, closer, and TAKE A LOOK! I don't care if you've never examined another patient in your LIFE! YOU ARE GOING TO EXAMINE ME!" And she did. But I wasn't afraid of her. Come to think of it, I think she was the department head, too. But she was a weenie compared to this UW doc. I have all kinds of nerve when it comes to weenies.

So the day of surgery came and they had found my veins (terrific veins) and piled my hair into the cartoon cap and put the breathy-warm-air-blankie over me and suddenly here she comes. I'll call her June. "How are you doing?" she asked. "Fine, just fine," I said, "but....June....I believe it's in my best interests to spend the night here in the hospital." She turned her back away. "So you think you ought to spend the night?" she questioned me.

"I do," I said.
"It can be a long wait for the ferry and there's all kinds of lumps and bumps on the
planks getting on to the ferry and I'm uneasy about the first night. I am not at all convinced that I won't need hospital care tonight."
She turned towards me. "Well," she said. "I'll see what I can do about that. I'll try to find a room for you."

After surgery I got a cheeseburger. Ice cream. Morphine every six minutes. My blood pressure began to slide downwards all through the night but that was okay because there were doctors there to come in and check it and do what doctors are trained to do, things Alan is NOT trained to do. And the next day I was let go at about one o'clock, by which time many of the staff and I were singing and having a high old time. Well, I was having a high old time and they were having a contact high old time.

Four days ago a representative from the U. of Washington called to give me the date of my follow-up visit. September 20. Okay. "And you were a 'day patient'?" she asked. "Nope," I said, "I spent the night." She whistled through her teeth. "How did you manage that?" she questioned me. "I just asked." I said. "Wow," she whispered.

This morning, another staff member called, wanting to re-remind me of the follow-up date. "And what was it that we did to you?" she asked. "You removed a _________________," I said. "Did we do anything else to do?" she asked. I laughed. I laughed and I laughed. "Other than monitoring me and changing my dressings and making me feel safe and being very very nice to me, that's it." "I just wanted to be sure," she said.

So that's it. I'm much less sophisticated about these things than the rest of you are, out there. I just want to put my two cents in and say GRAB YOUR VOICE AND USE IT. Because it's true - nobody's gonna say it for you. And there's nothing. Nothing at all to lose.

By the way - - no more pain!!!!!