Re: Re: Insurance (getting coverage for out-of-network treat...

January 30, 2004

Dear ,

Thank you so much for the uplifting and caring letter you wrote on 1/28.

This group is what it is because of you. You really show us all how to

empathize

with one another and, even how to " let go " now and then. Your post was

beautiful! I printed it and have been reading it at least once a day. In my

life

away from the computer I have a very caring husband and some friends, but no

one to whom I can REALLY talk. These groups are so very important!

Actually, I like winter, and do not find it dark at all. I'm in New England,

and I think that the snow lights everything up! Of course my husband thinks

I'm a few cards short of a deck, because walking is so dangerous when it comes

to the ice and slush! I do know people who do feel that they suffer from

SAD, though. One of them has all 100 watt bulbs all over the house and " ON " all

day long and panics if one goes out. (I've actually stepped a bit back from

this person.) Tom was having to change her bulbs at all hours, etc.!

I do agree with you that, usually, there is a light at the end of the tunnel

if you will. It's just that when things really pile up it seems like a very

long tunnel. I know that I probably need revision surgery, but my hands will

have to be first and I have no idea how that recuperation will go....certainly

easier than our backs! But with a hand in a cast, I'm not sure how I'll take

care of my urostomy! I've pretty much decided to just forge ahead and let

things take care of themselves. I see the hand surgeon next week -- at

N.E.Baptist, where our Dr. Rand is.

On top of everything else, my beautiful granddaughter was hospitalized on

Monday with anorexia. I know, we all have a real plateful. I try to pray.

Again, before this becomes a tome, thank you for being there, for being you,

and for running the group!

Carole (the elder)

February 10, 2004

Thank you so much for this beautiful letter, Carole. It is amazing to learn what

complex medical situations some of us are facing in ourselves and our families.

Given my long delay in replying, I sure hope your granddaughter is doing better

by now.

I do not know what kind of hand surgery you were referencing here, but I have

always been impressed by the complexity and artistry of this kind of work. (I am

assuming you are content with your hand surgeon and confident of his or her

expertise.)

Years ago, when I was 14 and a patient on the Women's Orthopedic Ward at Walter

Army Medical Center in Washington, I made friends with a charming girl

about one year older than I was, from Alabama -- we both loved the same poets,

and I was in awe of her because she had attended some kind of special program

for teens who hoped to become fashion models -- " Intensive Glamour and Poise " or

some such course. Anyway, my hospital friend had had damage to just one hand --

no other part of her body -- from childhood polio, and needed a series of

operations to restore or increase her use of that hand. I was SO impressed

that she had a rather mysterious and special doctor, set apart in a distant and

separate office somewhere, whose designated field was something new and exotic

to me, called " Hand Surgery " -- unlike the rest of us, who always saw the same

all-purpose " bone guys " for our assorted knee, hip, spine, and shoulder

problems. It seemed only right to me -- appropriate, predictable -- that a

person whose grace and beauty so far surpassed my own, at age 14, would have her

very own rarefied and refined sort of MD.

On another point you made in passing, Carole, I just have to mention that your

reference to something your husband thinks (regarding your penchant for wintry

walks) gave me a moment of comic relief. Not at the opinion itself, which does

not sound terribly accurate -- " Of course my husband thinks I'm a few cards

short of a deck " -- but at a memory of my own which this evoked. I was reminded

of a colorful and cosmopolitan Italian psychiatrist, raised in Buenos Aires,

whom my spouse and I saw briefly for marital therapy some twenty years ago. This

doctor, while highly gifted and erudite, was one of those people, much like

myself, who can relocate to a faraway land, immerse himself in a whole new

language, and converse exclusively in this language for innumerable decades

without ever mastering the accent. (My Spanish accent, for instance, ranges from

abysmal to laughable.) So every once in a while, at a session with our affable

Italian-Argentinean shrink, and I would just look at each other in

perplexity, trying to figure out what the heck the guy had just said.

This doctor loved to tell stories, usually concerning other patients whose

troubles we might find instructive or somehow relevant to our own. The moment I

am remembering occurred in the midst of one of his cherished marital-therapy

anecdotes . . . .

" The wife was a lovely woo-man, " he was saying. " Charming, gracious, and highly

astute. In fact, her intellect was actually quite formidable -- she never

missed anything, that woo-man; a very sharp person indeed! But as for the

husband, owwww! For some reason, the eh-spouse of this woo-man was SO obstinate,

so lacking in insight . . . . All evidence to the contrary, the fellow was

absolutely convinced that his wife was just not playing with a fool dack . . . "

So there we were, going " Dack . . dack? " And there was our psychiatrist,

repeating with mounting exasperation, " Dack -- DACK! A fool dack! He kept

eeenseesting that the woo-man was just not playing with a fool dack!!! "

I'll say it again: You, on the contrary, my dear Carole, are unquestionably

playing with a fool dack.

As ever,

Re: Re: Insurance (getting coverage for

out-of-network treat...