To And Fro

94

I could no longer live in my apartment given the broken door and large roadside hole so I needed to find a new place for a while as I sorted through the new issues in my life. As Daina had a spare bedroom, and we were already taking my computer and stereo to her condo for safe keeping, I asked if I could stay there for the next few days until I knew what my long term living circumstances would be. She agreed and with our third trip to my apartment the morning after the incident I collected my toiletries and a bag of clothes and any other little valuable kitsch I might have lying around. It felt wrong leaving the rest of my stuff in this now permanently open place, but moving everything to Daina's was too much to handle with no empty room to put it into. I just had to let my nerves settle and hope the rest of my belongings wouldn't interest strangers while I was gone. It probably helped that my apartment was directly under the manager's, but I fretted just the same each day I was at Daina's and not checking on my place.

With my computer taking up the majority of her small dining room table it occurred to her that, with all of my desktop publishing software in her place, I could help her make Christmas time letters to her various family members and relatives. While I could, I warned her that using only my printer they wouldn't be as crisp and clear as the Quarterly and The Doctor Who Report issues were. That was fine with her as they'd still be a step up and save her from writing all of the permutations by hand. She composed the base letter and we went to the local copy shop to find an appealing style of paper to print them on. By the end of the day we were done and I helped her with the envelopes, sticking on return address labels and stamps as she wrote the mailing addresses on them and sealed each card with the letter included. I was thankful for the task as it kept my mind off of my unguarded stuff, but as she decided to drop them off at the mail box that night, I asked if we could swing by my place just to ease my nerves. Everything left behind was still in place.

The following day she was off to work and with little idea what to do with myself, I decided to assemble my stereo components and realized her television was modern enough to have stereo jacks on the back, allowing me to hook it up to my stereo system as well. For the first time I was able to watch television with great stereo sound and excitedly showed Daina when she got home. It turned out it was one thing to assemble my own stereo but she was nervous about the thought of it intermingled with her television. I assured her it was completely safe and there was nothing to worry about. She took me out to eat that night and I fought off the urge to ask her to swing by my place, less it became an annoying daily habit. I was able to do this for two whole days before asking to check on it again midweek to find everything still in place and untouched, though a bit cold with a few snow flakes blown in through the hole in the wall.

As Daina had a cat, I needed to have the door to her guest room closed at all times to keep the cat out. While I wasn't allergic to cats, I was allergic to the household dust that would get into their fur. As her cat was a single person only feline, I didn't have to worry about it coming to me for attention. My days finally fell into the routine of working on the next TDWR issue while listening to cable news. In between I'd stay in touch on the car accident investigation and the ramifications.

The driver had run home the night of the accident and when the police figured who the car belonged to they went to his house to find him. His wife claimed he wasn't there and since they didn't have a warrant, they couldn't force their way in. The driver turned out to be a chronic drunk with a history of such driving violations. But he had a good lawyer and as the police couldn't check on him that night, there was no proof that he had been drunk at the time of the accident. Nor, too, could they prove he was even the driver that night as the apartment manager's husband only saw his backside as he ran away from the scene. His story was that he had left the cowboy themed bar to discover his truck had been stolen and then for some reason walked the two blocks to the local 7-Eleven to call his wife for a ride home. Why didn't he call from the bar, it was still open at the time? He couldn't explain, nor had the 7-Eleven clerk remembered seeing him. In the world of land-lined telephones, no record per call was kept by the local telephone company so his story couldn't be disproven. It was also odd that he had his wife give him a ride home, yet she told them after this supposed ride home that he wasn't there... He couldn't explain that, either.

When I called his car insurance company to cover my damages and other costs, they told me they wouldn't be paying as the owner had told them 'the car had been stolen' and they weren't responsible for the damages caused by 'whoever stole it'. Yet while the driver had verbally told police that his car had been stolen, he refused to file a stolen vehicle report and swear to it. A smart thing for him to do as the police told me they were planning to immediately charge him with filing a false report if he did. But his car insurance company didn't let it get in the way, just that he had mentioned the possibility to a cop in passing was good enough for them not to pay for the damages. Thus it seemed my costs weren't covered by his insurance, nor did I have any renters' insurance at the time to cover it either and I was apparently out of luck.

Then to my surprise the apartment complex's own insurance offered to cover the damage, less the value of the couch given its age and having come from a thrift store. Of my just under two thousand dollars worth of damage, I received a check for sixteen hundred dollars and knew under Food Stamp rules I couldn't save it in my bank account past the end of the month without reporting it. So what to do with the money? I concluded much of what had been destroyed I could live without, such as the keyboard I had purchased to play with and rarely used since. Buying a replacement couch was out of the question as Daina's condo didn't have any room and I didn't want to ship a new couch to my broken apartment. I decided to replace my computer with a second generation PC clone. Their prices had plummeted in anticipation of the fourth generation PC coming out in the next year, so it was a good time to upgrade at least one step up the ladder, even if I'd still be two steps behind. I placed an order for it at Jeff's friend's business which had since moved from his basement into a real store front at a shopping center and he would have the parts in and fully assembled by the end of the year.

As for a place to live, after two weeks staying in Daina's spare bedroom it was time to pay my rent, but as I couldn't live at the apartment anymore, I brought this issue up to the manager. She realized the duplicate apartment above her own was empty and said I could move in there at the same rate and not even have to worry about changing my mailbox as my current apartment wasn't going to be repaired and re-let until next summer. So for Daina's Christmas break we spent much of the time making trips from my old apartment up two flights of stairs to the new apartment carrying a handful with each trip. Daina particularly damned me for having concrete block & board shelves for most of my storage, but I pointed out to her it was cheap and easier to carry up one piece at a time rather than trying to wrestle with a whole shelving unit all at once. She grumbled it might be the case, but still damned me for it under her breath with each concrete block she had to carry up.

By the last week of December Nineteen Ninety-One, I was moved into my new apartment, a duplicate to my old apartment, the only way to realize the difference was the two flights of exterior stairs to reach my door, and that my unused patio was now a balcony. I pledged to myself to actually use the balcony once Spring came. To replace my couch, a friend in the writer's group had an old wooden framed couch I could have as its pieces had come apart over the years, but as he knew I was handy with wood he thought I could get it back together and into a usable shape. My first night in the new apartment I spent pounding the pieces together with a mallet and using glue for the seams and fresh cross dowels for stability. I was startled by a late night phone call and it turned out to be the manger wondering what all the noise was as they were trying to sleep. I apologized as I hadn't realized the time.

I settled into my new apartment assuming I'd be there for at least the next year or two.

Little did I know that was not to be.

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Saved

93

It was Friday the thirteenth – Well, no, it was actually Wednesday the eleventh -- that Daina called me on the phone and told me she was going to Denver overnight that Friday to see one of her favorite writers. So he won't think I'm trying to boost views of my blog by dropping his name, I'll call him 'Barry David'. He was a syndicated columnist who wrote humorous articles of reflection and slice of life discoveries. These articles had lead to a series of books and he had become a periodic guest on the cable news network I often watched. Being allergic to newsprint -- No, really, I am! -- I had never read any of his articles but did like his interviews. Still, I didn't like them enough to want to tag along on a ride to Denver and see him, so I turned down Daina's offer.

As the coming retirement of Johnny Carson from The Tonight Show had come to light, I had taken up watching his final broadcasts, sitting in the center of my couch before heading off for bed. I had first become aware of him and his show in Nineteen Seventy-Five after my mother had taken me to the New England apartment while still working on the night crew in my home town. I would spend the evenings with father at the family home and watch the first half hour with him until mother was off work, there was the half hour drive to the apartment town, then I'd watch the last half hour of his show at the apartment as mother got ready for bed. Back then The Tonight Show was an hour & a half and remained that way until the Nineteen Eighties. While never a regular viewer I had caught his show often since and he had become a long time figure in my life. Given his coming retirement, I decided to savor these last few months and made sure to get myself on the couch and watch his show each and every night I could.

On Thursday the twelfth, I realized I missed visiting with my former software start-up company friend, Pat, living in Denver. During the past year & a half I had been going up to Denver for overnight visits so I could get my quarterly supply of fat enzymes. To ease my schedule of taking public transportation for these trips, he had been kind enough to host me overnight so I could make these trips more comfortably and visit with him and his family. But as I no longer needed the fat enzymes to stave off my weight loss issues now that the antibiotics had addressed that, this also meant I hadn't seen him in a while to compare thoughts on recent science fiction books and musical groups we liked. Calling his work number I asked if I could come up for another overnighter that Friday to visit and he seemed happy to have me again. I then touched base with Daina once she had finished her school day and asked, instead of joining her to see 'Barry David', could I catch a ride and have her drop me off at Pat's house and then give me a ride home the following Saturday? She agreed and I set my video recorder to tape The Tonight Show in my absence.

Friday the thirteenth came and after working at the school all day, then going home to prepare an overnight bag for herself as she'd be staying with her mother at her family home for the night, Daina picked me up and gave me my ride. I visited with Pat and his family, debating about philosophy as well as discussing other life issues and his wife prepared the family room couch for me to sleep on as I had often done during these visits. Pat and I retired to the family room to talk some more before he went off to bed on the upper floor and I watched a bit more of rare television channels not carried by my own towns' cable system.

I was still awake but getting ready to go to sleep when Pat's house got a phone call some time after midnight. I was surprised Pat would be getting a call so late in the day. Then he came down and told me the call was actually for me. I picked up the family room's extension and it was Jeff. I had mentioned to him in passing that I would be visiting Pat this weekend and he had remembered it. He told me he had gotten an emotionally distraught phone call from my mother as apparently I was dead, but they couldn't find my body. Jeff really couldn't tell me much more about the story himself as he had a very hard time getting that much of the facts out of my mother when she called him. He recommended I call her and let her know I was still alive.

Calling my mother she was furious with me, ''HOW DARE YOU PUT MY NAME DOWN AS THE EMERGENCY POINT OF CONTACT!'' she yelled at me over the phone. ''HOW COULD YOU PUT ME THROUGH THAT?'' she demanded and paused long enough for me to ask what she was talking about. She wasn't very coherent but I finally pulled out of her that she had been called by the apartment manager and told that they thought I was dead as a result of a car accident and asked her permission if they could break into my apartment as I hadn't been answering the door. I asked if she had the phone number of the manager and as luck would have it the manager had given it to her and I decided I should call her next to find out the full details of what had happened. ''NEVER HAVE ME AS YOUR EMERGENCY POINT OF CONTACT AGAIN!'' were mother's last words to me on the call.

Calling the manager she was relieved to hear my voice and know I was safe and alive. At the time Johnny Carson was on television it turned out a drunk driver had left the nearby cowboy themed club that night and rather than curving to the right when driving home on the road, he curved left, jumped the curbing of the road and planted the front of his pickup truck through the living room wall of my garden level apartment. As the manger's apartment was directly over my own, she and her husband got up to discover what the crash was. The driver had managed to pull himself out of the passenger window of his truck and had begun running the rest of the way home. The manager's husband started to give chase but, given that he didn't have shoes on, soon thought better of it and turned to come back to the apartment building where he realized the front of the truck had broken through the wall where my couch was placed and wondered if I was all right. When I didn't answer the door after his repeated knocking he feared the worst and had his wife dig through my apartment application paperwork to find a phone number to call.

The manager said I should come back as quickly as I could as the police were there going over the accident scene. I agreed and thanked her for the information and then figured I should call Daina and ask her to take me back now, rather than wait until the next day. This being before the days of ubiquitous mobile phones, I cracked open the Denver phone book and looked through it trying to find the likely phone number of Daina's family home. Finding a number, I gave it a call only to get no answer. Did I have the wrong number? I didn't see how but finally picked another phone number with the same last name in the book. It turned out I had reached Daina's eldest brother and I quickly introduced myself and told him the gist of the situation and asked to confirm the first phone number I tried. It was the right number and I thanked him and went back to calling Daina's family home again, still without an answer. Had something happened to Daina as well that night and her mother was out of the house as a result? My mind raced with what this all meant and what I should do. As it was clear I wasn't going to be able to get home anytime soon, and since my longtime friend Jeff kept to late night hours anyhow, I called him back and told him the story, asking if he could go to my apartment and see what was going on for me. He agreed and in the meantime I went up to Pat's bedroom to let him know as well.

Perhaps I should have asked Pat for a ride back home at the time, but as Daina had brought me to Denver, I saw her as my ride back and kept trying the number to her family home off and on for the next few hours, still with no answer. Jeff called back by three in the morning to let me know they had pulled the truck out of the wall and the police were done with their work there. They were just going to leave the hole in my apartment bare with my living room on display to the elements and any passersby but Jeff convinced them to get a sheet of plywood and nail it over the center of the hole to at least partially protect my stuff until I got there. He was heading home himself as there didn't seem to be anything else he could do. I thanked him and noted my problems trying to reach Daina so it seemed I wasn't going to get back anytime soon.

I called her family home periodically throughout the rest of the night with no answer and finally decided I should try to get some sleep myself. I didn't get more than a nap, though, and finally Daina's mother answered the phone soon after seven in the morning. She was angry that I was calling so early but at my request went to wake Daina. I told Daina the news and she agreed to come right over and pick me up. She and her mother had been home all night, but the only phone in the house was on the first floor next to her mother's bedroom, so Daina hadn't heard it ringing herself. I concluded that her mother must be a very sound sleeper.

When we got back to my apartment we first saw the single sheet of plywood hanging over the hole in the exterior wall and found the apartment door, which had been broken down, had been pulled back into the doorway, though it could no longer be latched and locked. The rest of the apartment was fine, but the living room section was littered with bits of concrete, wood and plaster. The spine of the couch had been cracked by the weight of the truck and various parts of my stereo system had been dinged by the flying debris. My computer system, right next to the hole, had been completely spared as the force of the crash had been aimed away from it. In total I had shy of two thousand dollars worth of damage as I later tallied for the insurance claim. As my apartment couldn't be secured anymore, I realized I had to find a place for my electronics and asked if we could take them to Daina's condo for the time being. She agreed and with the first load to her place we picked up her camera to take pictures of the damage as we returned for the second load.

Never before had I gotten an out of the blue opportunity to go to Denver for an overnight stay, and never has it happened since. Had I been home that night there was no doubt that I would have been on that couch watching Johnny Carson as the bumper of the truck would have broken through the wall and plowed into the back of my head. The driver side front tire would have continued to roll in and crushed my spine into my lap. I could never believe it was all just a profound coincidence and have ended up with the only conclusion possible to explain how my life was spared...

'Barry David', at least for that night in my life, was the hand of God.

While I toyed with the idea of writing him soon after to let him know, the events of life soon pushed that thought aside and I didn't get to it until many years later when I mailed him a thank you letter and told him of that night. Though I hadn't included contact information as part of my letter he must have gotten the address from the front of the envelope and sent me back a signed postcard saying ''Wow.''

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resolution

v

And so the worse is over, at least for this volume. Now all that lays ahead is my ultimate 'professional' destiny and the revelation of what my 'situation' truly is.

Over my years I've come up with a simple phrase that denotes how I feel about my place in life. Given my unusual experiences, I find that I will often identify with bits of other people's lives while most people identify with how much of other peoples' lives corresponds with their own. Thus I coined: ''I identify with everyone and in return no one identifies with me.''

Generally I hate such definitive statements, for there is always an exception and I am one of them.

Typically when you hear 'no one' or 'nobody' in a definitive statement, it so often seems people are talking about me. ''No one has dreams that don't feature themselves.'' ''Nobody would stick their finger into a light socket!'' ''No one is allergic to rice.'' ''Nobody's going to open that jar of old peaches.'' ''No one can remember things that well from that long ago!'' When I hear these my response has become, ''Please don't refer to me as a nobody/no one.'' But, in real life, it seems that's exactly what some people have actively tried to make me through their machinations. The irony is, it's their very own actions which I feel has made me somebody...

The question is: Am I 'somebody' you'd want to meet late at night on a street corner...?

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The Simple Answer Is...

87

There is no simple answer. What had caused my weight loss? And why did antibiotics help it while I was taking them but I would begin to decline when they were stopped? I would like to say it was 'X' caused by 'Y', but the reality is all I have is a fist full of theories based on guesses. Before the doctor who helped me, Betsey, left the state, here's the theory we came up with...

When I had walking pneumonia in the Spring of Nineteen Eighty-Four, it was treated with a strong course of antibiotics. Now we know that when antibiotics are taken, they often damage the balance of intestinal flora that we all have. By 'flora' I mean the community of bacteria that live in our guts and help keep 'bad' bacteria from taking hold while helping us to digest and absorb the food that we eat. So as I experienced my first strange health symptoms in the Summer of that same year, the guess is that the course of antibiotics for my walking pneumonia had caused an imbalance with those little bacteria in my intestines. This resulted in issues impacting which nutrients I could absorb as the years continued.

Of this imbalance, I had likely become allergic to a strain of 'normal' intestinal bacteria that we otherwise all have. I say this based on the fact that what I had, and caused me so much trouble, didn't seem to spread to those around me. Otherwise many of my friends would have been suffering from unexplained weight loss as well and bathroom bouts. As it was only me, then the reason it affected me and not my friends was because there was something unique to me involved in the problem. Given my now known catalog of allergies and intolerances to other common things in peoples' lives, it seems most likely in retrospect that I had become allergic to one or more strains of benign intestinal flora.

Next, this strain I was allergic to loved simple sugars such as fructose, in the most common form of corn syrup, as when I had them I would have a worse reaction in my gut. Is it possible that when I drank a corn syrup soda within a few hours the bacteria I was allergic too soaked it up and multiplied in my intestines to the point that it was plentiful enough for me to have that allergic reaction to it? The first symptoms of it being an escalating blood pressure and a sudden headache? And when the level of that bacteria had grown too large for my body to handle, it would flush it out through those painful bathroom bouts? One thing I can confirm here is that, while on the antibiotics, I could eat all the fructose and corn syrup I wanted to without ill effect. So much so that I became a huge pie fan during the early nineteen nineties!

Yet, once I knew I needed to avoid corn syrup and other sources of fructose such as fruit in the late nineteen eighties, why was I still having bathroom bouts? As it turns out, even table sugar has some fructose in it, though it is mostly sucrose a more complex sugar that many if not most bacteria can't use. So over the course of a few days, the bacteria I was allergic to would still get a small bit of fructose and slowly grow until three or four days later there was enough in my gut to cause the allergic reaction and result in another one of my prolonged bathroom bouts. Further, while I had been avoiding food with corn syrup as one of its main ingredients, I hadn't realized that it could still be in processed foods as its tenth or fiftieth additive. Once my full brain power returned, I realized this and made sure to avoid even these minor amounts of corn syrup laced food less they feed my intestinal problems.

With this theory of 'an intestinal bacteria I was allergic to', it nicely explains why the initial dose of oral antibiotics I had gotten from the joint doctor seemed to help, while the injection of penicillin didn't. But then, why hadn't the two courses of oral antibiotics I had received from the emergency room in the first few months of Nineteen Eighty-Nine not helped me? Had they been of too low a dose to effect the flora I was allergic too? Or had they been prescribed for too short a period to effect it? Or had I actually felt a little bit better at the time, but assumed it was just a periodic fluctuation in my condition that soon dissipated once those few days of antibiotics were finished? I did experience that switching me from Cephalexin for one month to Anaprox had reduced my improvement for that month. Could it simply be a case of the Cephalexin worked against the particular strain of bacteria I was having the bad reaction to while the Anaprox had less of an impact on it? Could it also have been a case that the two short batches of antibiotics I had gotten in early Nineteen Eighty-Nine had also been of a type that didn't affect the bacteria?

It would have been nice to have had these questions answered so I could then spend the rest of my days letting medical professionals know I was allergic to flora 'X' and thus needed to make sure I kept it out of my gut. Instead I'm stuck with the story of how, after years of weight loss and suffering, taking a long course of antibiotics cured it. What was it? They'd ask. I dunno, the but theory is...

Now in this era, there is scientific evidence that an imbalance of intestinal flora between twins can cause one to lose weight & have intestinal problems while his or her sibling is doing fine on the same diet. Further, doctors now know to have their patients take a course of probiotics after a course of heavy oral antibiotics to insure their intestinal tract is quickly restored to an appropriate balance of flora.

In the past, it was easier for doctors to label someone as mentally ill rather than face the possibility that there was a medical condition that they didn't understand or know how to treat. Remember when impotence was a psychological problem? Not any more. Remember when stomach ulcers were a physical manifestation of too much psychological stress in someone's life? Now we know ulcers are caused by harmful bacteria and sometimes too much of a type of medication. But back then these conditions were simply labeled a 'psychological condition' and those patients discarded by the medical profession because those doctors didn't want to admit they hadn't a clue.

Actually, perhaps that tactic is still in use today...

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Run Out Of Town

85

Two months after my doctor at the community health clinic, Betsey, had placed me on antibiotics, I had started to dramatically improve and I returned to Denver's Premier Medical Center to pick up my three month supply of fat enzymes. While there I noted the improvement in my condition and the reason, and my doctor there told his supervisor and apparently all hell broke loose. It was at my subsequent visit to PMC three months later that I found this out as my doctor there, whose only contact with my health care was to copy a prescription note during the past year so their pharmacy would supply the fat enzymes to me, sheepishly spilled the beans as to what had happened.

It had been the general medical consensus in Colorado over the past three & a half years that my health concerns should not be addressed. Reasons for this were wild and varied when I would hear about them. Most, if not all, of the reasons were not based on reality, but on the ego of the imaginative doctors involved. The one medical doctor who had taken my health issues seriously three years earlier, Dr. Smith, had been run out of the state. In part it was because he was one of our state's first practitioners of 'Clinical Ecology', a field with the focus that many of our health problems were due to allergens and intolerances in our daily environment. Even though, in practice, he was little more than a souped-up allergist, it was a new concept that the Colorado Medical Community didn't want to see take root. As a result, Dr. Smith's existence in Colorado had been controversial but after he treated me and confirmed that some of my medical concerns were based in reality, the medical community had to get rid of him less some more respected doctors who had been poo-pooing my health concerns might have their competence questioned. So three months after treating me, Dr. Smith decided he had to leave the state rather than fight to retain his medical license in Colorado.

For the next year & a half, the medical community of Colorado was happy as my health concerns were once again being ignored and thus their reputations were not being brought into question while they, in turn, continued to trash my own. Even Betsey had spent her first year with me by ignoring my health concerns to the point of sending me to a psychologist to address a bulging spinal disc. Why had she bucked the establishment and prescribed me antibiotics in the Fall of Nineteen Ninety? Had she begun to have some doubts of her own? Had my single appointment with her since seeing Jude, my new counselor, made the difference with my using the comforting & pondering tone I learned from him when discussing my health issues with her? Had he called her up and vouched for me after his discovery that my fears of being persecuted by the medical community had turned out to be true? Or had it simply been a case that she truly thought my headache that Fall really was a sinus infection which required an atypical treatment of five hundred milligrams of Cephalexin four times a day for a whole month? Then to be extended for a second and third month despite the fact that it wasn't addressing the headache pain itself?

It was now clear why Betsey had gone into a flurry of having my medical concerns looked into by other doctors at the start of the year, as I now knew she had been threatened by the medical establishment of Colorado once they knew she was treating me seriously. And while two of the consults had affirmed my health concerns in the neurological area, the gastroenterologist review of my intestinal issues had found nothing. Was it because the problem could not be found now that I had been on four months worth of antibiotics? One thing we did notice was that if the antibiotics were discontinued, my intestinal problems began to return. So Betsey had concluded to keep me on a maintenance dose indefinitely to allow my continued improvement.

After I had been told about this behind the scenes threatening of her by the medical establishment, I asked her about it at my next appointment and while she confirmed it had taken place, she really didn't want to get into the details of it as she felt medical community politics was not something a patient should have to deal with. By the following month she told me she would be leaving the state to establish her own practice in Kansas. When I asked if it was due to the medical community politics, she confirmed it was. She had wanted me to be transferred to a new doctor just starting at the clinic and gave me his name, but told me that the head of the clinic had vetoed that decision insisting that he, himself, would take over my continuing care. As she felt the head of the clinic wasn't going to be a good choice for me, she was giving me the new doctor's name as there was nothing stopping me from making an appointment directly with him to continue my care. I thanked her for the thought, and kept the name of the new doctor in mind, but told her I would like to see the head of the clinic just to hear from him personally. She understood.

While I had nothing to speak of to thank her with, I did know she was also a fan of 'The Other Show' I liked and had written speculative scripts for, so I printed up two more copies of my latest scripts. I returned to the office the following week, her last, and I offered her the copies in thanks and hoped she enjoyed them and wished her well on her new practice. She thanked me for them and we exchanged a hug.

The following month I returned for my appointment with the head of the clinic. By this point I had over eight months of training by my counselor, Jude, as how to handle emotionally troubled people and that knowledge came in very handy. When the head doctor of the clinic came into the exam room he was all shrieking and yelling, pacing the floor as he did so without even seeming to think of sitting down. He called me many names, disparaged my character, and let me know he knew I had been faking all of my health problems these past many years, regardless of what the neurological consultants had found. Rather than being sucked into his emotional outburst, I sat calmly in place and just observed his behavior and once he was finally done I simply, gently asked, ''Does this mean you won't be renewing my antibiotics for this month?''

His energy having been spent from his tirade, he scoffed and then went to the counter and pulled out a pad and his pen. He threw the renewal prescription slip at me and left the room. On my way out, I scheduled my monthly follow-up appointment with the new doctor who had joined the clinic.

I had met a member of the beast which had been disparaging me over the past three & a half years behind my back and found that, other than bluster and hatred, there was little else there...

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Fall Out

78

 

After my experiences in the Fall of Nineteen Eighty-Seven, with my mother's primary doctor having fabricated notes about me and subsequent doctors having openly disregarded their own test results concerning me, I had fantasized that I would one day find A Champion. This champion would discover that I had been mistreated by the medical community and stand up to the medical gossip mongers who were more interested in passing around imagined stories about me than doing their professional best to look into my health issues and resolve them. The champion would make them feel ashamed of what they had been doing for all these years and they would cower in response. And my new psychiatrist counselor, Jude, had made a phone call to one of these doctors and confirmed the sort of things I had been going through over the years. During that call, he had taken that first step as that champion...

And he decided it wasn't a road he wanted to take.

Still at our second appointment, and after that phone call, Jude was shaken as his plan of revealing to me my delusion of mistreatment had turned out to be his misimpression of professionalism on the part of medical doctors. Trying to salvage the appointment he said that going through medical school was an intense & grueling experience and that when budding doctors reached the chapter about mixed-sex people, they took it as the 'comic relief portion' of their education, at least that was what he had witnessed at the time in his own education. He now suspected that the emotional laughter response his colleagues had at that time permanently colored how they saw people suffering from an intersex condition and that was why doctors had not been taking my other medical issues seriously.

We ended the meeting with him suggesting that, even though the doctor's response had been unprofessional, I should probably not wear my ear studs to future doctor appointments and also take up wearing a three piece suit & tie when seeing them so they would more likely think of me 'professionally'. For the ear studs I noted that I couldn't take them out without them quickly closing up, but I had clear plastic spacers I could use instead. As for the three piece suit I thought that it would likely make me stand out more for suspicion given that I was going to the indigent focused community health clinic. He agreed with that last point and felt the plastic spacers would probably be good enough. We'd talk more about it at our next appointment.

Between appointments, I reflected how my pierced ears had never worked out as I had hoped given how they attracted household dust particles, which I was allergic to, and thus forced me to clean the studs and the ear holes a couple times each day just to keep the itching at bay. I concluded that, since I hadn't been enjoying having ear rings and medical people were using them as an excuse not to provide me treatment, that I would just give up on them. I removed my studs one night before going to bed and by the end of the week they had closed, just leaving a red dot where each hole had been.

At our next appointment we discussed my mother's primary doctor and his need to rewrite my test results in his records. Jude concluded that, as that doctor had laughed out loud upon seeing me at my first physical examination, he had his own issues with my intersexed condition but couldn't bring himself to admit it and thus when subsequently seeing me his mind read 'psychological issue' and he assumed it was a problem I had rather than his own. His need to discard my actual medical test records and to instead replace them with narrative notes showing the results he had wished to see was a defense mechanism which affirmed my health issues weren't 'his problem' but a problem in somebody else's field. The subsequent stories he had been creating about me and spreading around the medical community were just a way of defending his own ego and ensuring that others never reconsidered his own opinions about me and perhaps find him out.

With this information, I assumed we could do something about it, perhaps through the medical board, but Jude pointed out we couldn't as this was just his guess of someone who had never come to him for treatment. Effectively it was the medical community that needed psychological counseling to gain enough comfort to look beyond my intersexed issues and see my other medical needs. While I had hoped Jude could call other doctors who I suspected of disparaging me over the years just so I could directly hear more of the junk they had been spreading about me, he didn't want to do that sort of thing again as he didn't think there was anything constructive that could ultimately come of it.

The best he could do was teach me some techniques I could use, when seeing medical doctors to treat my health concerns, that would reduce any psychologically adverse reactions they might have when seeing me. Effectively, I was going to become their unofficial counselor during my appointments with them so that in return they might be better able to be my doctor during those and future appointments. In the meantime he was going to talk to various people in the medical community, I hadn't yet met, to see if he could find one that might be comfortable enough with the intersexed side issue that they would actually work on my weight loss and bathroom bout issues. With little other option, I agreed to this plan.

As we had now established 'a rapport' he asked if he could order some tests of his own to look into my biological background. Not my weight loss issues? I asked. No. As he didn't actively practice physical medicine he felt that was best left to those who worked that field every day. What he wanted was to order some test to address his own curiosity in my intersexed condition. As I had some curiosity there as well, I agreed. To keep news of these tests from the hospital my mother worked at, I went to 'the other hospital' in town to have my blood drawn for them.

The following visit there had been some curious findings from those tests. The first one was that the lab tests had me noted as being registered at the hospital as 'female'. Had I told them that when I registered? I told him I hadn't, nor had I ever been asked, they must have just looked at me and guessed or concluded it must be the case based on the tests that were ordered. Regardless, the genetic test he ordered showed me with the male 'X/Y' chromosome pair and the testosterone test he ordered had also surprised him. He had expected that to show me with an under performing level of testosterone to explain why I had never developed a meaningful beard, instead it showed that I had a surprisingly high testosterone level, more appropriate for a boy in early puberty rather than a male ten years after the fact. He had originally thought that perhaps he would prescribe me some testosterone to see if it would make my body 'more manly', but given the level I already had in me, that made no sense. He had exhausted his level of expertise when it came to mixed sex issues and we finished up with more discussion of how to handle medical doctors having issues with me.

While I felt we were still months away before we could make any progress with that goal, I left his office at least musing that I had a testosterone level in my body that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger blush!

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My New Doctor(s)

70

Early into Nineteen Ninety, my Medicare coverage kicked in and I decided to get back on the doctor visiting path. As I had a friendly enough visit with a new doctor, 'Betsey', at the community health clinic I thought I might as well start with her and see if I could get her interested in my long term health problems. It was always a question of finding focus, I felt, rather than walking in and noting everything that was outstanding and unaddressed in my health issues. Two examples of things I wouldn't think of bringing up were the sudden brief bursts of fever I had been having, first once a day, then twice a day since the age of sixteen, and the recent lumps I had been finding underneath my skin. When I had mentioned the newly forming lumps to my mother she took a look at one on my arm and told me they were cysts, but then she became incensed and told me I couldn't have cysts as only women got them. Either way they didn't hurt and so I wasn't going to bring them up to my new doctor on my visit with her, I was just going to focus on my weight loss and intestinal issues.

The community health clinic had moved to a brand new building about a half mile from the forgotten stretch of the main road. Smelling of fresh paint and spaciously spread out, we now had to get to the front desk to be sorted out. When it was my turn in line, I noted my appointment and new insurance coverages and I was sent to the financial department to affirm my insurance and recalculate my co-pay. As my original co-pay had been a couple of dollars given my tight income versus expenses, with the insurance coverage, my visits were going to be effectively free. Then I was sent to the west wing of the building to the waiting area where I got to announce myself again to their reception desk and note my appointment time and with whom. I was asked to wait in the open concept waiting area which featured the first televised endless loop of a medical infomercial I had ever seen.

My name was called and I was lead back to one of the many doors and asked to sit in an exam room. My temperature and blood pressure where taken and I was told to wait for a bit until the doctor came. Betsey was young compared to most doctors I had ever met, perhaps just under ten years older than me, and she came in with a smile which was a huge improvement to many of my recent experiences. She asked why I was there and I told her that I would like to review my years worth of weight loss and she gently assured me that she had been told it had all been looked into and nothing had ever been found. While she may have been told that, I told her that hadn't been the case and pointed out the fructose intolerance and fat malabsorption diagnoses I had gotten when Premier Medical Center had looked into my health two years earlier. I had given copies of those records to Michael when I had first come here including a follow-up Qualitative Fat Analysis that had affirmed the findings. She was flustered for a moment by my confidence and started looking through my file to find those pages in it. And no one has ever treated you for these? She asked with a touch of surprise. No, was the answer. She said that, while avoidance was the only option for the fructose intolerance, she could give me a prescription for 'fat enzymes' which I could take before each meal and it would break down any fat in my diet into more easily digestible forms. That sounded good to me and she wrote the prescription for it and asked if there was anything else. I decided to take this minor win and not bring up any other items at this time. I was out and directed to the on-site pharmacy to get my prescription filled.

It happened to be at the far end of the same building and after my time in line, the pharmacy filled it and, while my appointments were now free, the prescription took-up the money I had brought for my presumed appointment co-payment...

After the first month of taking them, I was surprised that the first thing I noticed was that the lumps that I had been finding all over my body in the preceding months had all vanished by the second week on the fat enzymes. Had the lumps been some form of fat that was broken down by the enzymes? I wondered. While I hadn't noticed anything diet wise from taking the enzymes, I decided to stick with them as they had done something beneficial for me. A quick follow-up appointment with Betsey to confirm I'd like to continue with them and then back to the clinic's pharmacy where they told me they only had a few left and then I'd have to take a different type of fat enzyme after those were used up. They called back to the clinic area to have the doctor approve the change in the script for the different pills and, annoyingly enough, I had to pay a double co-pay, one for the partial bottle of the first type of pills and then again for the partial bottle of the other type of pills to finish up the month. I tried to argue as my money was precious but they assured me that, as it ended up being two different prescriptions, I needed to make two different co-pays.

Back at the apartment I finished the remaining original pills in nine days, then started the other pills only to have an allergic reaction to them. It was like my red food color #3 reaction where the insides of my body itched terribly and all I could do was take a cold shower to numb my entire body down until it finally went away on its own. These new pills did have a number printed on them in red, but I couldn't imagine how that little bit of red coloring could cause such a whole body reaction. Still, before returning to the clinic and complaining, I wanted to be sure it was the new pills and waited for the second day of taking them. The next day I had the same reaction and called up the clinic to make an appointment about it, I didn't take any more of the pills until I heard what the doctor had to say.

Betsey agreed that it was probably an allergic reaction to the new pills and I shouldn't take them any more, I had hoped to return them and get my co-pay back but was told that wasn't how it worked. Betsey looked through the Physician's Desk Reference in the room and confirmed that the pills did have red food color #3 and then looked at the page for the original enzymes I had been taking and we looked through the list of ingredients to find nothing in there to which I had a known allergy. She decided from that point forward she should always have me review the PDR with her for my future prescriptions, to be safe. So the question was, how could I continue to get the original fat enzymes as their on-site pharmacy was no longer going to carry them? Given my finances, getting them at a regular pharmacy at full price was out of the question, but Betsey did find out that, not only did they have a partnership with the other hospital in town, they also had a partnership with Preimier Medical Center in Denver where I could go and get the prescription from their discounted pharmacy. But I'd have to see one of their doctors to clear it. She had the front desk call and make an appointment there and I was given a slip of paper with the appointment time and date.

Walking out of the clinic with this good news, I then realized I no longer had a car to drive to Denver with, nor a driver's license so borrowing a car wasn't an option either. What the hell was I going to do?

It occurred to me that there might be a national bus line that passed through town on their way to Denver and I looked into it and found one had gone out of business, but the other was still running. Calling their local number to find out their schedule the bad news was: While they did have a bus that could get me there in time, it left for Denver at six fifteen in the morning. The local buses would not be running in time for me to get downtown to the national bus terminal. While I could buy my ticket over the phone, I decided to buy in person once I got there and my new question was how...? I couldn't afford a taxi, it was too early in the morning to ask friends for a ride, so the only answer was to walk from my apartment to the downtown area in time for the bus to Denver. Gauging the distance and the speed of my emaciated shuffling, I figured I'd need to have at least two hours to walk there, plus another thirty minutes spare time in case I was slower than I thought as well as to account for the time it might take to get the ticket once there. So I set my alarm and was out of my apartment a three forty-five in the morning in my winter coat as I began my long walk to the downtown area.

Rather than stay on the grid of the main roads, I had found a more direct, diagonal route to the bus terminal taking neighborhood streets. As I was already use to nighttime walks in fields and neighborhoods, this was not a big change for me except in the length of time walking. There's something comforting walking through a neighborhood at night, everyone tucked asleep and you drifting by, entertaining yourself by admiring their yards or house decor. About halfway through the walk, it became a challenge and I sat on one home's retaining wall to rest up for a bit as I had planned time for it. Unfortunately, once I was on my feet again, I realized I'd need another rest stop before reaching the downtown area and forced myself to at least make it halfway further before I did. After another few minutes resting on a street side bench, I was again on my feet and swore not to stop until I reached the bus terminal. I actually did, twenty minutes early, and I was the only one needing to buy a ticket so I didn't spend any time in line, just burnt through two months worth of pizza and music money to afford the round trip ticket. The tickets were good for the route without any date or time specified so I didn't have to worry about what time I had to be back at the national bus terminal in Denver.

The ride was comfortable enough and let me sleep, but I wasn't prepared for all the side trips we took making the just over an hour trip into a two & a half hour trip. Once in the city, I found the Denver bus that would take me to the main office of the Denver bus service and there figured out the routes I needed to take and they even gave me a discount pass for having a Medicare card. I finally got to Premiere Medical Center with forty-five minutes to spare, but then had to go through their financial department given my new insurance coverage. By the time I reached the clinic waiting room they were actually waiting for me but fortunately I wasn't going to miss my appointment as the financial people had called to let them know I was there.

Fortunately, too, the doctor I was to meet was another new face and I didn't have to worry about seeing the less than pleasant people I had met there before. This doctor was even younger than my new doctor back home, he was a resident there as part of his training and asked what brought me here. I told him about the prescription issue and asked if I could get the one that I wasn't allergic to, from them. He looked at the prescription slip from the community health clinic and decided ''there was no harm in it'' and called their own pharmacy to see if they carried it. They did and I was given their prescription slip and sent down to the pharmacy in the basement of the complex. When they saw my address, they asked why I had come so far. I explained how the local clinic's pharmacy no longer carried it and so I was sent here and briefly noted the process of getting here. The doctor had written the script for a month but the pharmacy called him up and asked him if they could change it given my circumstances.

I had to stand aside as they filled scripts for other patients until the doctor called back and approved the change. Rather than give me thirty pills for a month, they were going to give me the wholesale supplier bottle of one hundred pills to last me a bit over three months. I told them I didn't know if I had enough money for a co-pay for something that large, but they told me there was no co pay, I could just take it. It was the biggest pill bottle I'd ever seen in my life, but I didn't worry about it as I had to rush and get the local bus back to the national terminal in Denver with the hopes of getting back to my town before the local bus routes closed for the day.

I didn't.

Arriving a bit over half an hour after the local buses had stopped, I couldn't face walking all the way back to the apartment and instead used the bus terminal's payphone to call Daina. The bus terminal was closer to the south side of town so it made sense to call her. She was happy to pick me up and, as I had hoped, she offered to take me out to eat on the way back to my place. I got to tell her of my very long day and she told me of her school day. She wondered why I hadn't asked her for a ride to the bus terminal that morning but when I noted the time I had to be there, she realized she didn't want to get up that early, herself.

The next time I'd see my new in-town doctor, Betsey, it'd be for something different.

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Feeling The Heat

69

As my apartment had a cracked bathroom faucet which I decided to replace on my own, it also had a broken 'zone control' on the baseboard hot water heating system. The zone control allows the thermostat to open and close the hot water flow when the space needs more heat or less. I discovered this problem when I got home one day in the Fall and the apartment was roasting. Changing the thermostat didn't help and, always being one to try to figure things out myself when possible, I found a rubber coated hand lever shut-off valve, I was able to pull it out and stop the water flow. As I knew that couldn't have been the way the thermostat controlled the pipes, I searched the rest of the baseboard piping until I found the zone control, wired up and making soft 'zzzzzzz' noises as I changed the temperature setting, but not turning its valve when the noises came. So it seemed clear to me it had stripped gears and the little motor needed to be replaced.

In the meantime, as the apartment was now cold the next morning, I discovered I could lightly move the hand lever one way or another to slightly adjust the temperature up and down in my apartment and so I did until it was comfortable. A few weeks later I took the initiative to bring the broken zone motor to the largest plumbing & heating supply warehouse in town and ask if they had a replacement. It turned out that the motor had been discontinued and I could order a likely replacement, but as it would be special order I'd have to pay up front and there would be no refund if it didn't fit. I decided to pass on that option and just used the hand lever from now on to control the temperature of my apartment. I actually think it worked better as thermostats turn on when it gets too cold and turn off when it gets too hot. But with the hand valve slightly open at all times, a constant trickle of warm water slipped through the pipes keeping the temperature constant. I'd get up in the morning and if it was a colder day out, I'd slightly open the valve more, if it was a warmer day out, I'd lightly tap the valve more closed. Simple really!

With my first Winter at the apartment, I discovered during my walks to the grocery store and 7-Eleven that my ear studs captured the cold and froze my little ear lobes. In the years since getting pierced ears, I'd been having other problems with them anyhow. If I took a stud out overnight, the hole would close-up and the stud not fit back in, I had found a thinner stud I could still get in and use it to pull and stretch the hole out until the original stud would very tightly squeeze back in. Once I left a stud out for two days and I ended up having to have the lobe repierced. For times I might get wire ear rings, the ear ring place gave me clear plastic spacers that I could put in the holes and then the thin wires of the ear rings would fit inside the plastic spacers. While I never got wire earrings, I soon learned to use the plastic spacers when I would be out walking in Winter, rather than the studs, to keep my lobes warm.

Another problem I had been having with the studs was an allergy to household dust. As I would live and walk in buildings, bits of dust suspended in the air would settle on my skin. With bare skin, I had learned to wipe the area off with a damp paper towel when I had an itchy patch, but with the ear studs, I'd actually have to take them out once or twice each day to rise them off, preferably with a special fluid to clean out bits of dust and relieve the itching around and in the holes of the lobes. I had never planned on pierced ears being such high maintenance and I started to debate what to do about it.

There were more after work visits with Daina to discuss club meeting plans and upcoming Quarterly & book review segments and again Daina asked afterwords if I'd like to join her for dinner somewhere and this time when I gave my canned response of waiting until the after club meeting dinner later in the month, she became upset. ''What's wrong with me?!?'' she yelled. It turned out she had been rejected by a male coworker when she had expressed an interest in him, on top of that she assumed my not wanting to go out to eat with her was a sign that she was not someone to spend time with. I assured her that it wasn't because I didn't like spending time with her, it was simply because I didn't have any money.

This wasn't an answer she had been expecting. And so I explained to her my circumstances of being on a fixed disability income due to my health and associated weight loss and how I only had fifty dollars a month for all my out of the home expenses, of that I saved fifteen dollars for the after club dinner and that was the only time I would go out to eat, with the rest going for household needs.

Daina was stunned by the news, having never suspected that I was living in the poverty range as she worked with low income families all the time as part of her work. Also, she had just assumed I was a natural 'bean pole' and liked being that thin. I assured her I didn't, and while I didn't explain the main reason I had problems getting doctors to address it, I did tell her that I had problems finding a good doctor.

Well, to her mind that clinched it and now she insisted on taking me out to eat, on her dime. I told her I couldn't accept that as I could never imagine being able to pay her back, but she assured me I didn't have to, there wouldn't be any tab I'd have to worry about. With that assurance, I accepted and she took me to the nearby diner a few blocks away. By the following year this would become a two to three times a week treat.

By the turn of the year, I found my cost of living adjustment would net me around twenty dollars extra a month. While it was less than a five percent increase on my overall monthly income, compared to the fifty dollars I had been using for all of my household expenses, it was like getting a forty percent raise. Part of this became quality of life money that I would alternate each month as either a delivery pizza, or a new music album to add to my collection.

Life was looking up!

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