Summertime In The City

55

Desperately looking into ways of reducing my daily expenses, I relegated my car to an 'as needed' luxury. I would use it once a week to visit Jeff, once a week to buy food, and then for any medical visits. All other travel I did, I started to take the bus as the temperatures warmed. I had discovered that the nearest bus stop was only a quarter mile from my mother's mobile home and I could get a discounted punch card to make it even more cost effective. But while cost effective, the one thing taking the bus wasn't was time effective. You include the walk to the bus stop, arriving early to make sure you didn't miss the bus, waiting until the bus arrived, riding the bus downtown before you could transfer to the destination route you wanted, ride to a stop near but not at your destination and walk the final distance, and you were looking at a three hour round trip. Not including the time you spent at the destination.

Still, the one thing I did have in my life was time. Being without a job in the Summer of Nineteen Eighty-Eight left me with plenty of time to fill and taking the bus somewhere, even if it was to a bookstore so I could browse at books I couldn't afford to buy, was one way to fill my day. Another way was my volunteer work to run The Doctor Who Report as well as head the local science fiction club. These gave me a sense of accomplishment that was otherwise lacking in my life. Originally I was in financial dire straits with both clubs as the production costs at the copy store turned out to be far higher than the estimate. This was because they were charging me a 'reduction fee' for each page copied from my fourteen & a half by eleven inch masters down to the eleven by eight & a half inch copies. This fee might have made sense at some time in the past, but as the task only required the technician to punch in the reduction rate once, then press the button to start the print run, they were effectively charging a fee repeatedly for a task done once. Imagine if you walked into the copy place and wanted ten copies but then they charged you the same additional fee for entering in the number of copies into the machine for each one of those copies. It didn't make logical sense and no matter how much we discussed it, it didn't matter as that was their pricing rules. What saved me was figuring out that I could use the self-serve copiers, punch in the reduction number myself for free, and spit out the reduced copies for the same price as a basic copy. While this method allowed both club publications to barely break even, it did mean I would spend much more of my personal time sorting through and assembling the resulting copies into booklets. But as I said, I had plenty of time.

The quality of the publications had skyrocketed as well. While TDWR's first few issues were printed on my dot matrix printer and then reduced to mask the dottiness of the resulting text, my computer guru Jeff had been so inspired by my efforts that he picked up a copy of some desktop publishing software for himself as well as one of the very first laser printers designed for home use. He invited me over to his home to assemble the 'zines using the publishing software and then we printed near perfect master pages on his new printer. Once these puppies were reduced at the copy place, they rivaled, if not exceeded the quality of news print.

The Doctor Who Report had taken an exciting turn just itself. A budding artist had come to me wanting to supply artwork for the issues. Not satisfied with only providing generic Doctor drawings, he wanted to create a comic serial for it. The problem was, he wasn't confident in his writing skills and wondered if there was someone who could help him out in that regard. I could. I opened up my list of Doctor Who story ideas and mentioned each one of them to him in turn that I was not already planning to write up as a story for the newsletter. One after another, none of them appealed to him and I was starting to have to delve into my fanciful ideas which included season long arcs without any stories to support them. One of those arc ideas blew his mind and next thing I knew, I was having to scramble to figure out supporting mini-stories to fill 'the season' upon which the overall story could take place. This turned out to be both a blessing and a curse as it allowed me to conceive little stories that would fit within the handful of pages he could draw every two months, but to reach the end of a long story arc also committed me to producing roughly four years worth of TDWR in order for the long ranging story to be fully played out and reach the end... Still, I concluded, I had plenty of time in my life.

As I was about to be receiving unemployment payments to make up for my lost state aid stipend, I would now have to start job hunting. As I had been out of work for over eight months due to my health, I was told I could go to our state's local branch of Vocational Rehabilitation and they'd help me find a job. This was welcomed news and I got their address and took the bus there. When I walked into their office I went to the receptionist and stuttered while saying my name. She burst out laughing!

Now I know I haven't mentioned my stuttering in a while and I don't think I've shared this insight with you, but of the responses that people can have when hearing me stutter: Laughing is a welcomed choice. You see, it's honest; it lets me know where I stand. The worst response I get when stuttering in front of a stranger, let's say a store clerk, is the 'repressed' response. These people hear the stuttering and immediately clamp down their face into a taut intentionally expressionless mass. But in reality their clamping down to not let out their natural reaction results in the veins in their face and forehead to ever increasingly bulge out, the muscles around their mouth and eyes tightening even more until they're left with a grimacing face that looks somewhat angry, not expressionless. On these times, I find myself wondering if these people are holding back their anger because of something I've done, or because they don't want to reveal their natural reaction to my stuttering. Regardless, this taut face of tight muscles eventually overwhelms whatever natural response they are hiding and they truly fall into the anger their repressed face portrays. Laughter: A nice loose face, after which they may later shamefully apologize to me. I can graciously accept their apology and we're happy to see each other at some future time. The repressed anger face stores that feeling for all the subsequent times we meet, tense and uncomfortable at the very least.

Once she was done laughing, she took my name and said an intake counselor would see me shortly. A man came out a short time later and motioned me through the 'employees only' door. He walked me to his cubical and we sat. He asked me why I was here and I described my getting back to work after an eight month break. He was sure they could help me and scheduled a return time for me to come in and be evaluated by their staff psychologist. In the meantime I was to let the receptionist know that I would be a client and she would issue me my free monthly bus pass. Free bus pass? Yes, the city provided them with free bus passes for their clients. When I went to the receptionist's desk, she sheepishly apologized for having laughed at my stuttering, I told her it wasn't a problem and I in fact appreciated the honesty. Not only did she give me the bus pass for the remaining half of the month, but she had also just gotten in the following month's ride pass and she gave me that as well. I thanked her and left with a metaphorical skip in my step, looking forward to the return appointment to be evaluated.

In the less rigid bus services, passengers were welcome to 'shoot the breeze' with the bus drivers on the more solitary ends of their bus route. I had first seen this when I had started to ride the bus and one day, when the seat across from the driver was empty, I took it and struck up a conversation of my own. Starting out with safe topics like the weather, after a few times I was now a familiar face and conversation topics would range from current television or movies to sometimes philosophical ponderances. I loved these chats as they helped pass the time riding on the bus and also gave me someone to visit on a regular basis given my lack of coworkers to see each day. Once the bus started to fill up, though, it was clear that the conversation was over as the bus was in its home stretch into the downtown area with its greater traffic and twisty streets it meant the driver had to pay rapt attention to the road. Then on the connecting bus out to your destination, about halfway home and more than half empty, you could once again scoot to the seat across from the new routes' driver and conversation again sparked to life.

When I arrived back at the Vocational Rehab office for the psychological evaluation, starting out with an initial discussion about myself, it then included an I.Q. test, then a large bubble test based on true or false answers to vague questions. The I.Q. test was fine as it was performed verbally, though the psychologist seemed to be angry about something and I wondered if it was a case of 'repressed face' caused by my stuttering. But the huge bubble test, dependent on filling endless bubbles by hand with a pencil, was pure torture after the first few minutes as they turned into hours. It had only been expected to take a little over an hour but given that I'd have to give my hand frequent stretches and rests this slowed me down greatly. Further, the vague, apparently culturally based questions the test asked often confounded me and I had to ponder many. There were quite a few questions that used terms which I had no clue what they meant and I skipped them for now, intending to get back to them once I finished responding to the more clear questions. While out for most of the time I was filling in the bubbles, after the first hour and a half the psychologist was angry that I hadn't yet finished and periodically returned to the room to berate me for still not being done. I asked if I should just stop where I was and he told me I couldn't, that I had to complete the whole test before I left. When closing time came my hand was in horrific pain and I still hadn't finished, only being about three quarters of the way through with a sprinkle of unanswered questions in between, the psychologist came in and yelled at me one more time before ordering me to leave the test as it was and go home. I was so thrilled to be away from him and hoped I didn't need to see him again.

When I returned for my follow-up visit with the counselor, he ushered me into his office stoney faced and we sat down at his cubical. He told me that they would not be working with me or helping me find a job as I was not fit to be employed. When I asked why he told me that the psychological evaluation had come back and definitively showed that I was a person with a deep seething hatred of all other people and couldn't stand being around them. When I tried to protest he pointed out my protests as proof that the psychological evaluation had been correct and I was to leave and never come back.

I left dismayed and silently sitting in the back of the bus as I concluded that I would call back the office once I got home. I asked if I could have an appointment to see the psychologist again to talk to him about his results. It turned out I was the first one who had ever asked and he was interested to find out why. When I arrived back at Vocational Rehabilitation to see him I was ushered into his office. I mentioned what I had been told by the counselor of his results and it meant I wasn't going to be getting any help finding a job and returning to work. What of it? I continued that I couldn't imagine where he had gotten such a hugely negative impression of me. He snorted at me and told me that he had 'caught on to my little trick' of trying to invalidate the bubble test by not answering enough questions, but he had spent enough time with me that he went ahead and filled in enough of the remaining questions himself based on his view of me. The results from the bubble test were 'objective' and couldn't be argued with and thus it proved what a terrible, hate filled person I was ''who had never even thanked anyone in their life for anything.''

This floored me as I knew I had thanked people often in my life. I had even been made fun of by the science fiction club people at the after meeting dinners for thanking the waitress too much, such as when she brought me a refill for a soda. I told him so and he told me I was lying. I mentioned how I ran two clubs and the people in them seemed to like me and one club even voted to put me in charge. All lies and delusion stemming from my firmly rooted pathology. I asked if I could have a copy of his report and he said I could, informing the receptionist to make it for me.

Once copied, she handed it to me and I thanked her and went home.

What more can I say?

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Returning To Work (not)

54

After having lost an appeal on my state aid while my Social Security Disability claim was being processed, the Legal Aid attorney told me she would review the judge's findings and decide if she would appeal. When I asked her what I should do about money in the meantime she said, given the judge's finding that I was too healthy to get the state stipend, maybe I should see if I could return to my old job.

On the whole, I was worse off than when I had left work the previous September due to my health. While I had actually gained a handful of pounds in the recent months, it was little compared to the amount of weight I had lost during my hospital stay the previous fall and the additional weight loss when trying out the allergy free diet recommended to me by the clinical ecologist's dietician. At this point I was now 'only' forty pounds under my ideal weight. On the other hand, the joint pains which had plagued me during my years working at the big grocery store had been resolved since I had been avoiding corn, a now known allergy for me.

So I went to the big grocery store and caught the manger as he was entering the office. He was surprised to see me and I told him I was ready to come back to work. He didn't think that would be possible as there was no longer a place for me. And thus I truly knew I no longer had a job. When I told my friend Jeff about this later that day, he pointed out that I could then go and file for unemployment benefits instead. So I decided I might as well try that as I waited to hear from the Legal Aid attorney.

I went to the unemployment office and eventually filled out the paperwork and the following week was told my request had been denied as the big grocery store had reported back to them that I was still working there. This was news to me and I went back to the grocery store to confirm it, but the manager wouldn't see me and so I went to the back room where the schedule was kept and, sure enough, my name wasn't on it. I went back the unemployment office and told the clerk that, no, I wasn't still employed there and that when I had last talked to the manager he had told me that 'there was no place for me' there. The clerk ultimately didn't care but told me how to file for an appeal hearing and let me know I could contact Legal Aid if I couldn't afford an attorney of my own.

Returning home, I called back the Legal Aid answering machine and let them know of the denial. A day later I got a call back from another attorney there who wanted to meet with me about it. At his office I told him the facts and he agreed it was a new one on him, while businesses often come up with reasons why a terminated employee shouldn't get unemployment benefits, claiming the person was still working there when they weren't was a novel approach. He said he would look into it and let me know.

In the meantime I received a letter from Social Security denying my disability coverage. The detailed letter explained that it was due to there not being enough evidence that I was suffering from a health problem and that if I wanted to appeal, I could request a hearing. And if I couldn't afford an attorney of my own... I decided I would ask the Legal Aid attorney handling the state aid stipend about it when she eventually called me back.

She did a few days later and told me that, in their opinion I was now healthy enough to return to work and so they wouldn't be filing an appeal on the state aid decision. Clearly, if that was their opinion, then there was no point in bringing up the Social Security denial. Two days later I got a call from the Legal Aid attorney handling the unemployment denial and he told me that they wouldn't be filing an appeal of the unemployment decision due to the fact that I wasn't healthy enough to work. Before he could hang-up I had the wherewithal to interject and let him know that I had just been told that his office had found me to be healthy enough to work just two days earlier. He was startled and asked who had told me that, I gave him the name of the first Legal Aid attorney and he said he'd talk to her and see what was up.

Still, given his call and the fact that I personally agreed with his finding, I decided to complete the Social Security Disability appeal paperwork on my own, requesting a hearing and mailing it off.

I received another call from the Legal Aid office the very next day, this time it was someone in charge and he explained to me that each section of the Legal Aid office was responsible to make their own judgment as to who was healthy or not healthy enough to work. As each department had made their judgment based on their own review criteria, there was no contradiction in one part denying me help because I was too healthy for aid while another part denied me help because I wasn't healthy enough to work. When I pointed out the obvious, that there was a contradiction, he noted that part of the determination process included their current workload and budget constraints and with those additional factors in mind, there had been no contradiction.

And that was the end of my Legal Aid help.

Wondering what I was going to do for money until the Social Security office scheduled my hearing, and watching my overdraft line of credit being quickly exhausted by two months of COBRA health insurance payments and resulting fees, I decided to file an appeal of my unemployment insurance denial on my own, as well. As I was appealing the statement that I did have a job when I didn't, not based on my fitness, I decided there was no contradiction in it for me.

I quickly received a letter back with the Unemployment hearing date & time and wondered if I should go to the store and physically rip the work schedule off the back room wall to present at the hearing to prove my name wasn't on it. I thought that, while justified, it would be a step too far and I would rely on my sworn testimony that I didn't have a job with the big grocery store and would let them say what they were going to say once they were sworn in.

When the hearing day came, I arrived at the unemployment office and went up stairs to my scheduled hearing room. I waited outside until called in. The judge in the room asked me where the representative of the grocery store was. I told her I didn't know. So we waited for two thirds of the hearing time for him to show up and, as he never did, the judge took my sworn testimony that I didn't have a job with the company and hadn't worked there since the Fall of Nineteen Eighty-Seven. That was all she asked of me, not about my health, and told me that companies often automatically deny unemployment claims in the hopes that it just wouldn't be appealed and thus win by default. But as the company representative hadn't bothered with the hearing, then I would likely win by default and I should receive a letter confirming it by the following week.

I did and it did.

I could finally pay-off my overdraft line of credit!

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Legal Aid

53

After having my state aid canceled unexpectedly while I awaited the decision on my Social Security Disability claim, I went to the local Legal Aid office for advice as I otherwise didn't know what else I could do.

When I arrived, the front room of the Legal Aid office was effectively abandoned. There were chairs in the room and an empty receptionist desk. At first I decided she must be away at the restroom or was returning from a late lunch or something and just took a chair and waited. And waited. As I truly had no other clue what to do about the events in my life I saw little other option other than to keep waiting, one time glancing down the hallway behind the receptionist's desk in the hopes of spying someone and getting their attention. But as far as I could see, there was no one, the floor seemed vacant. Was the office closed and they had simply forgotten to lock the front doors? I wondered.

After a bit over an hour of this one of the lawyers entered through the front door and noticed me on the way to the back hall, ''Who are you waiting for?'' I told him that I was here because the state aid office had given me their address and said they could help me with an appeal. Had I called and left a message? No, I had only been given their street address and I assumed I could talk about it with the receptionist when I had gotten here, was she out on lunch? No, they had to let the receptionist go due to budget cuts and people were now supposed to call and leave a message. I didn't know. He gave me their phone number and told me I could use the receptionist's phone to call and he was gone down the hall, then up the stairs at the far back. Picking up the office phone set to line one, I dialed the number and watched the light for line two blink on and off in time with the ringing I heard on the receiver. After about four rings, a box next to the phone I was on started to run a tape and I heard the answering message. After the tone I repeated exactly what I had told the lawyer and left my home phone number. Once done, I hung up the phone in this surreal experience and left the office to rush home and await the return call. Two days later it came and I was given a name and time to come back to the office.

Arriving for my second time, I again took a seat in the empty front room and waited. This time, though, a Legal Aid attorney came to find me there a few minutes after the time I had been given. As she lead me through the hallway behind the receptionist desk and all the empty rooms on this floor, I asked her about it. She explained that it was due to budget cutbacks and the remaining personnel had all moved to the top floor so as not to be bothered by people walking into the office and wondering where the receptionist was.

She lead me up the single flight of stairs and then down the matching hallway to her office. I once again explained my reasons for being here and showed her the denial letter I had gotten from the state aid office, including the copy of the woman doctor's letter. The Legal Aid attorney assumed everything in the doctor's letter must be true and I had to explain to her that, no, it wasn't. I hadn't seen a single dozen doctors in my life, let alone dozens, I had been working right up until last fall when I had to leave due to my health issues, she could check the records at the Social Security office to confirm that, and I had never received any welfare benefits before in my life until these past few months after I could no longer work. The attorney couldn't believe the doctor would have gotten all of it so wrong and asked me where she could have gotten her impressions from. My only guess was the former primary care doctor who had defrauded me the previous fall. The attorney saw that as a separate issue and didn't want to get involved in discussions concerning him and instead asked if she could make a copy of the letter and left to soon return and tell me she would look into it and give me call sometime.

A week later she called me at home and confirmed that they would be taking my case and had scheduled an appeal hearing for the following month. While good news, it was devastating all the same as, without the stipend check, I had to use my bank's over draft protection to pay for my next month's COBRA health insurance payment. With the overdraft was a fee and that fee I had to let fall to my overdraft protection balance, thus incurring additional fees. I momentarily thought about the two club bank accounts that I had access to and their combined couple hundred dollars, but I quickly dismissed it as I was sure the issue with the state aid would soon be cleared up and I'd be receiving back payments to cover this month.

When I arrived at the hearing office the Legal Aid attorney met me outside and was ecstatic. She had found that the law explicitly stated that a doctor must first do an examination before rendering an opinion on someone's fitness for the state aid stipend. She had called the woman doctor and she had confirmed that she had never examined me and so we were going to call her again during the hearing and have her say that on the record. Once done the judge would have no choice but to order the state to disregard her letter and my payments would be resumed. This was great news and I fed off of her excitement as we entered the building and then waited for the hearing room to clear. A representative for the county arrived and we were soon into the empty room with a solitary conference table and no one else. When I asked about the judge, she explained that his office was in Denver and we'd call him up using the speaker phone.

It was actually the county's representative who made the call and the judge told us he started a tape recorder in lieu of a court reporter to transcribe the proceedings. The hearing began with the county attorney paraphrasing directly from the doctor's letter as if it was his own findings that I was a life long welfare fraud who had never worked a day in my life and had seen dozens of doctors who all agreed there was nothing wrong with me. The Legal Aid attorney cited my Social Security records as proof that I had worked near continuously since my teenaged years and that there was no record, nor evidence of me having ever been a welfare fraud. She then asked me three questions: Had I ever seen dozens of doctor's in my life? No. Did I have health issues? I briefly explained my history of weight loss and resulting impact on my life. Was a doctor currently treating me for it? No.

The county representative countered that the woman doctor had seen me for it and the Legal Aid attorney pounced, noting that the woman doctor had never examined me for my health condition and asked to conference her in on the phone to provide testimony to that effect. Permission was granted and the Legal Aid attorney took over control of the speaker phone and dialed the number. The doctor wasn't available right now, we were told, and the attorney told the receptionist of the fact that we were currently in the middle of a hearing and needed to talk to her. We were placed on hold and we waited for about ten minutes until the woman doctor got on the line.

She was briefly informed that we were in the middle of a hearing and would she consent to be sworn in and give truthful testimony. She did. The Legal Aid attorney asked her to confirm that she was the doctor who had sent in the letter to the county's state aid office. She was. Had she ever examined me before sending in the letter to the county's state aid office? Now she became vague, wanting to know what constituted 'an examination', legally. The Legal Aid attorney clarified, had the woman doctor examined me IN ANY WAY before sending off the letter? There was only silence on the line and after a moment the attorney asked if the woman doctor was still there? She was. Had she heard the question? She had. Why hadn't she answered? She assumed the county representative would object to the question. The Legal Aid attorney asked her counterpart if he had any objections to the question. He didn't. The Legal Aid attorney then repeated her question to the woman doctor, HAD SHE EVER EXAMINED ME IN ANY WAY BEFORE SENDING OUT THE LETTER TO THE STATE AID OFFICE?

No, but she didn't have to as she had spoken at length to a doctor who knew all about my case and knew the full details of my degenerate life, frequent sexual escapades, and lack of any true health issues. The Legal Aid attorney objected as all of that was hearsay evidence. The woman doctor countered that it wasn't hearsay as it had been told to her by another doctor. The Legal Aid attorney scoffed in disgust and told her that wasn't how it worked. The woman doctor disagreed and so the Legal Aid attorney asked if the woman doctor had any release form to have been talking to this doctor about me. Well, she must have since she had been doing it. Did she have my file in front of her. Yes. Was there a release form in the file for her to be talking to this unnamed doctor? We heard her flip through pages of a file before she answered, ''It must have gotten misplaced.'' The Legal Aid attorney, smiled.

But the county representative thought of an idea and asked who the doctor was that she had spoken to so we could call his office and have him also join the call and give his direct testimony. The woman doctor was again silent for a while before she answered, ''I'd rather not say.'' The county attorney assured her that it would help to clearly resolve the issues before the judge. After another pause the woman doctor said, she couldn't remember his name.

Effectively the hearing was over and the woman doctor was asked if she had anything else to add. Nope and she was dropped from the call. The Legal Aid attorney summarized that Colorado law required that a doctor must have examined someone before providing information to the state about their fitness for receiving state aid, the woman doctor had affirmed that she hadn't. Anything else she had claimed about me she had admitted was hearsay from a source she either didn't want, or couldn't name, and therefore had no standing. The judge asked if the county representative had anything to add? He didn't and we were done, the speaker phone was hung-up and we were leaving the building. The Legal Aid attorney seemed a little frazzled but was sure we were going to win.

The following week came the judge's decision that we had lost.

(as for what the sexual escapades had been? like everything else that was in the doctor grapevine, I had no clue where it came from or what it was supposed to have referred to...)

Woman Doctor

52

After various bad experiences with medical doctors concerning my health in the previous year, it occurred to me that all of them had been male and, given my 'situation', I began to wonder that maybe I would more likely be treated professionally if I went to a doctor who was a woman... At the very least it was a way of significantly narrowing down the list as I was once again back to flipping through the phone book pages in search of a new doctor.

And so in the Spring of Nineteen Eighty-Eight I was picking out the handful of female looking names and calling their offices to see if they were accepting new patients. Most weren't as apparently, given the quantity of female patients seeking a doctor who was also female, it made them very high in demand. Finally I found one and set an appointment. Before the appointment was to take place, I got a call back from her office saying she wouldn't be seeing me. Why? No explanation, the appointment was canceled from their end. I once again went to the small list of remaining names and started calling. I found another, actually closer to home, who had openings in her schedule. I asked for an appointment.

When I arrived, it was actually a very professional doctor's complex of multiple floors divided by specialty and a full service pharmacy as you walked in. My hopes to find a doctor to treat me with more courtesy rose given the gloss of her office building. Riding the elevator up to her floor I checked in and filled out the prerequisite paperwork. Given my troubles writing by hand, I had made sure to arrive a half hour earlier than they had suggested, it turned out to be just the right amount of time. Paperwork turned in, I briefly looked out the large window to the main road before my name was called and I was lead through a series of hallways to her combination office and exam room.

She welcomed me and then said she was surprised. It turned out the reason she had openings in her schedule was because she expected to be going on maternity leave in a couple of months and had been transferring her existing patients to other doctors in preparation. As a result, she didn't think she would be of much help to me. I explained to her my years of weight loss, my various medical tests showing results for which I couldn't find treatment and my hope that the underlying cause could be quickly found and I could be getting stronger and back to work in a couple of months. She concluded that since I wasn't expecting regular appointments but more of a quick review that perhaps her schedule would work out. I was to provide copies of my medical records for her, she made a follow-up appointment for an initial physical where she would also order any additional tests she thought were needed, and then a follow-up appointment was also set where she would tell me of her findings and thoughts for treatment.

I left the appointment feeling thrilled and quickly went home to retrieve my pile of medical test results and hospital records and was off to the copy place to make a fresh set. I then went back to the medical office and was directed to their patient records department where I provided them the copies directly. They were pleasantly surprised as they were use to patients signing medical request forms and the staff spending weeks trying to cajole copies of those records back from the various places. And here I was handing them the records all collected and they didn't even have to make their own copy, to boot!

Two weeks later I went back for the physical and was lead into a special purpose examination room and told to undress and get into the typical gown. Done, I waited for a bit and a man came in to perform the physical. This confused me and when I said I was expecting the woman doctor he explained that, given the number of doctors available in the building, when it came time for physicals they traded patients for examinations to have a same sex match and thus ensure patient comfort. I broached the subject that I had some, uncomfortable, physical examination experiences in the past given some puberty issues and I had specifically chosen a female doctor this time to see if things would turn out better. I didn't want to use any specific terms, largely because I still didn't know them for my situation, but he seemed to get enough of the gist that instead of insisting we go ahead with the physical he would first check with the woman doctor.

Another experience of sitting and waiting for what seemed like an hour in just the gown came and went before he returned. When he did, he told me that actually the woman doctor had reviewed my medical records and had decided that a physical examination wasn't needed after all. I could get dressed and leave and she'd see me at my already scheduled follow-up appointment. This was a surprise, though in part a welcome one given my past experiences; I wasn't going to miss another awkward examination.

When I returned the following week, I was once again taken to her combination office and exam room and this time she wasn't already there waiting. I sat down for a while and listened to her office radio which had the local public radio station playing softly in the background. As I had become acquainted with the station and had even visited with the station's manager a few times, I took this as yet another sign that this would be a good experience as we had similar tastes. And then she came in and, leaving the office door open, sat down and opened a file she had brought with her.

She told me that she had reviewed my records and congratulated me! Everyone feels a little stressed when college Finals come up but not to worry, she was sure I would do fine. And she was gone, leaving the door open in her wake. I sat there dumbfounded. As I hadn't been able to attend College in over a year because of my health, and we hadn't even broached the subject of College during my first appointment with her, where had all that come from? Had she mistaken me for a completely different patient or something?

With little clue what else to do I stayed sitting there hoping that she'd come back and I could ask her what she had been talking about. But she didn't return and after about twenty minutes a nurse came to the room to tell me I needed to leave as the room was scheduled for another patient. When I asked her if the doctor was coming back because there seemed to be some misunderstanding, the nurse let me know the doctor wouldn't be coming back and I didn't need any more appointments either.

I aimlessly walked out of the office, through the halls, and rode down the elevator in a stupor wondering what had that been about? But finding no clue.

A few weeks later I was told my state aid stipend had been canceled due to an unexpected letter from a doctor. They included a copy of that letter and it was from the woman doctor and had been sent straight to the county's state aid office.

In the top half she told them that I was a life long welfare fraud who had seen dozens of doctors and had never worked a day in my life. The bottom half of the letter noted that she had heard that I had seen Dr. Smith and then she dished the rumors about him she had also heard through the grapevine.

Counting through all the medical experiences in my life, I found that I hadn't seen a single dozen doctors yet, let alone dozens. Where the heck had all this come from? Had she been talking to other people about me despite not having any releases to allow her? Apparently 'yes', based on the letter, but where had she gotten this load full of B.S.?

I wondered if my mother's primary care physician had been making up even more stories about me, now, these many months later. Had he been spontaneously bringing me up by name to his physician golf buddies for a laugh and to add another layer of fiction about me and get it disseminated through this medical grapevine? Was that why the local gastroenterologist at the end of the year told me he felt the fat malabsorption test results couldn't be believed as he 'already knew' I couldn't have an organic cause to my weight loss? Because that was what he heard in rumors from other doctors that he never had my permission to discuss my case with...?

I called the state aid office about this and they told me that I could have a hearing scheduled if I wanted to appeal, and I could contact the local Legal Aid group if I didn't have enough money to hire a lawyer of my own.

With little other clue what else to do about this, I did what was suggested and contacted the Legal Aid group...

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Renewal

51

After having assessed all of the materials and advice I had gotten for running the local science fiction club, I came up with my approach by the Spring of Nineteen Eighty-Eight.

Originally designed as an all consent club, explaining why the meetings never went anywhere as they could never get everyone to agree on most things, I decided I would run it more as a business. As they had already settled on me to head the club at the end of the previous year, I defined my role as directing the club and making the choices for it, after asking for advice. I was effectively making myself a Dictator, but as I had spent three months meeting with various core members seeking their thoughts and input, they felt I would continue to ask their advice and were willing to let me do this. Especially as they had originally been planning to junk the club all together just a few months earlier.

Next was my Lieutenant, Daina, who would serve as the co-manger of the club as well as do some of the necessary behind the scenes grunt work such as keep in contact with science fiction authors through the mail and butter them up for appearances at future meetings. Then there was the Editor... While the same person who had been sending out the club newsletters over the previous three years, after looking over his output I had decided to take over the monthly two-sheet and instead offered him the role of being the editor of a new quarterly fiction 'zine that would now be published by the club. It was formatted after The Doctor Who Report I had come up with six months earlier and would contain short stories from members of the writer's group that Daina & I were both associated with, artwork from the artists who had sent in their work to be used, and an introductory welcome page from the editor, himself. I sold it to him as a higher profile step up from doing the monthly meeting notice and he accepted it. And finally we would have the Treasurer, currently an empty slot with me as an acting money manager.

I gathered a group of the core members who were interested and explained this new set-up and focus to them for their 'feedback', but essentially it was just to get their buy-in. One of the original founders perked up and seemed to think it could really work. She noted that if we raised our profile high enough we could contact book publishers and ask for free books. Could we? Yes, as long as we offered to review them and tout them in our newsletter, they'd love the free publicity. I kept this idea in mind and, knowing Daina was the most prolific reader of the group, asked if she might write me up some reviews to include in the initial monthly newsletters as samples. She agreed.

While Daina handled buttering up the authors, my task was to figure out what non-author meetings we could have. Calling around, I got in contact with some speakers' bureaus to see if they had members wishing to present something on a science or science fiction topic. I further found that the Air Force was willing to send out one of their representatives to talk of the space related research and work they were doing. And I visited the local public radio station to see if I could rope in their D.J. of the space music show to come in and talk of the space focused wing of new-age music. I got one better as he brought in a local space music artist himself for the evening!

When it came time to assemble the first Quarterly, I set up a time for the editor to meet with me, look over the artwork and stories that had been submitted for the first issue so he could select what he liked and we could format the issue that would carry his name. While he did come, he really wasn't interested in having to go through all of the material and left all the choices to me. He would write up the editor's page and get that to me when I was ready to print-up the masters. When that night came, I called him and he came over, but had nothing with him. I printed up the master sheets and went to work splicing them together into fourteen & a half by eleven inch sheets while he used the computer's word processor to figure out his one page. I had long been done but didn't want to pressure him and kept myself busy with other things until he had finished his first draft.

Looking it over I noted some sentences that could be clarified and he took a polishing pass on them and we printed it up and I trimmed it & taped it to its corresponding master page. I asked if he was going to join me to the copy store to help print it up. Nope, he had other things he had to do and I was off to print up the Quarterly and assemble it and staple it all alone as I had been with TDWR in recent months. While I took it for granted that I'd be doing The Doctor Who Report alone when I started it, I had imagined having help with the local science fiction club's variation...

When it was time for the following Quarterly to be planned out, he told me on the phone he'd leave that to me and to give him a call when I needed his page. When that day came, he was a no show for his page. I debated doing the Quarterly all by myself from now on, including the editor's page, but I instead called up Daina and told her she was now the editor. She was soon over to compose an editor's page to be included in the issue I had otherwise completed and then helped me print-up and assemble the master sheets. She was a good choice as she actively took over the task of choosing the fiction selections and core artwork for all the subsequent issues, allowing me to only be the facilitator in the publishing process while I otherwise focused on the club's monthly newsletter and my own upcoming TDWR issues.

Mailing in sample copies of the refreshed newsletter to book publishers, which included Daina's reviews of books as well as another club member's reviews, the book companies soon responded by sending us boxes of upcoming paperback, and a few hardback, science fiction & fantasy books. After Daina and I made our picks, we brought them to the meetings to let the club members pick out which ones they'd like to keep in return for providing us reviews once they were done reading them.

Ultimately, the renewed monthly and new quarterly publications were a huge success as well as the meetings and Daina was now able to woo known science fiction authors to come and do a reading for the club and discuss their work. One of Daina's book reviews so impressed a major author and his publisher that he quoted her review on his subsequent books, flyers and web pages for decades to come!

The Phoenix had risen and I used this success to buoy my spirits as I faced the years of heart rending medical experiences that still lay ahead for me...

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Assessment

50

Apparently, as part of my taking over the local science fiction club I was to also serve as a dumping ground for club related material, collected over the years, which the original core members no longer wanted to store. Fortunately it was only a couple boxes worth, at first, and it was fun digging through the material: Old flyers, Organizational paperwork, Records of sold items from events, and Various pieces of graphic artwork. When I asked one of the core members where they got the artwork from, she mentioned that most new artists are desperate to have their work seen and will often send it to you for free if you ask. ''Be sure to send them a copy of the final flyer or newsletter you use them in as a courtesy,'' she added.

Sorting through the box I made a list of all of the artist names I discovered. I could find addresses for a handful in the paperwork and for a few others that I heard lived somewhere in town, I simply cracked open the phone book to get addresses for the found names. For those I had the known address for, I sent off a query letter asking if they'd like to contribute artwork for the renewed club to use. For those out of the phone book, I added the opening that I was looking for an artist by the same name as yours, if you are them or know where they live... These letters sent off at the start of the year, within two months packets of black on white artwork arrived, some photocopies, some the original ink on tissue paper, which we were expected to mail back once done with, and then a sad addition as one artist had died in the past year and his wife was thrilled that someone was still interested in his work and hoped we could find a use for it.

The club had been sending out a two page newsletter each month printed up by the member who had his own photocopier. That was one way to pick your editor, I guessed. As the one mailing-off the flyers it was deemed he could collect any mail the club received at its post office box while he was at it, and thus he quickly became the club's treasurer as well since he was the first one with the membership checks in hand. While he was willing to continue to be the editor, he no longer wanted to be in charge of the money. I went to his house to see his set-up and discuss his ideas for continuing and perhaps enhancing the monthly newsletter. He showed me recent copies that were effectively typewriter written meeting dates, some new jokes he had heard between issues, and the list of the core members of the group helped to fill up the remaining blank space. The same list of names issue after issue each month. He really didn't think the newsletter needed all that much changing except, perhaps, for a different color paper.

I then asked how many copies were sent out each month and the number was around a hundred and fifty. I was surprised by how many members there were given that I'd only ever seen about twenty at most at the meetings. He explained to me that the majority of the copies were complimentary ones sent to all the other science fiction & fantasy organizations in the country to let them know that we were still here and what we were up to. Then to be safe, he'd print an extra twenty or so copies for spares in case people wrote in asking for back issues. Did that happen often? Not much during the three years he'd been editor, but you never knew...

All he was asking for was to be reimbursed for all of the issues and copies he'd printed up in the past two and a half years. What do you mean? He had been printing all of the newsletters out of his own pocket since taking over knowing that he would be reimbursed later. I was impressed by his deep pockets as that was not something I could have afforded to do. Still, he was the treasurer as well, why hadn't he been reimbursing himself from time to time? He hadn't had the chance to get to the club's bank since being signed-up as the treasurer there. If he hadn't been to the bank during the past two and a half years, what had he been doing with the membership checks? He reached over to a high shelf and pulled off an old coffee can and showed me the checks collected within.

He handed the can to me and I stared into depths struggling to keep a straight face while I fought to discover those perfect words that would not be taken as an offense: ''Huh. I – ah – had been under the impression that checks were no longer good if not cashed within a certain time frame. Like – ah – a year or so...?''

He gave me a blank look back, clearly unaware of this and answered nervously, ''Really?''

I offered that I might not know what I was talking about but, as he had to sign me up to the account at the bank anyhow, we could ask once we got there.

When we arrived we got in line for a teller and then upon reaching her with coffee can in hand, she looked through the checks and noted that it was actually six months that a check would have to be cashed, after which it wouldn't be accepted by the bank. When asking her what options we had with the rest, she guessed writing the people who had originally sent the checks and asking for fresh ones. Of the coffee can full, less than twenty percent were within the current six months and could still be cashed. This left the club with a balance less than The Doctor Who Report had in the bank, yet with supposedly more members to serve even if you didn't count the complimentary copies. We quietly made our way to the membership desk where my name was added to the account and his removed. I don't know if the manager had already heard through the staff grapevine or if it was a coincidence, but she offered us a deposit bag that could be conveniently used to drop off checks to be cashed at a drive through slot with no other action needing to be taken. I thanked her and we left.

Back at his home he brought up that he still wanted to be reimbursed for the past two and a half years worth of newsletters he'd been creating and sending out. I simply told him that I couldn't see how as the club didn't have enough money for the current mailing list, and as we found out how much money the club had lost over the years... I let him put two & two together as to how the club had lost that money and who had been the treasurer at the time. I felt his lack of reimbursement was a minimum penalty for his mistake, though I didn't come out and say it. I hoped he would just figure it out for himself.

But he needed to have some pride and told me that, then, we couldn't use his copier anymore. Looking over the pile of streaky, faded copies of the club's newsletter surrounding us, I told him I understood. When it was time for me to leave, he wanted me to take the boxes and boxes full of spare copies of the club newsletter created for those possibly wanting back issues. I told him he could keep them and I'd let him know if anyone wrote the club asking for some. I accepted the post office box key and the copies of the mailing list from him and left.

Thinking things over on my own, I decided to keep the money situation to myself as I didn't see how spreading it around to the club members would help anybody. From the mailing list, I wrote a letter to the members who had been on the list for only the past two years and not sent in a recent check and asked if they'd be willing to mail in replacement checks and to let them know the club was under new management. The vast majority of them never responded and I crossed off their names. One guy actually did respond with a scathing letter about how he had been relieved when his check wasn't cashed given the 'piece of crap' newsletter he'd been receiving in the mail. As he'd taken the time to respond, I kept him on the mailing list for another six months hoping the new club mailings would win him over.

They didn't.

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Doctor 'Smith'

49

Ever searching for a new doctor to take on my health issues, I stumbled upon a new type of doctor: A Clinical Ecologist. Effectively he was a souped-up allergist who tested for more than just the basic set of allergies and I thought, Why not?

He had an office directly across the street from 'the other hospital' in town and I made my initial appointment where we talked about my health issues and decline over the previous years and while he wasn't sure my weight loss was a result of allergies per sé, he was more than willing to test me. A subsequent half day was set aside for testing and I returned. The very first thing they did was test the 'control' substance that they used, glycerin, and I immediately reacted to it. At that moment Dr. Smith knew I was going to be an interesting case, so he told me. I was also found to be allergic to red food coloring #3, corn, rice, household dust, etc. These all became revelations as we later discussed them and I thought about them and my lesser health history.

In the case of glycerin, I had been having problems with toothpaste, mouthwash, and shampoo all my life, ending-up just having to live with the symptoms even if I didn't like them. Now I discovered that all of these had glycerin in them, now explaining my bad reactions to them. Once I found variations without glycerin, all these associated problems went away.

I had been having muscle cramps since my preteen years and gained joint pains by the mid Nineteen Eighties. Once I cut corn out of my diet, these things went away. Avoiding this was more challenging as corn had become one of the biggest occult food additives over the preceding decade under various names like 'modified food starch', 'maize starch', 'maltodextrin', and so on. With this one, I had to start reading all of the fine print on processed food and suddenly much of what I had been eating without thought became things I should avoid. And by avoiding them I felt much better, at least when it came to moving my muscles and bending my limbs.

Since my late childhood years, I would get these itchy patches that I would unthinkingly scratch. Yet doing so only made them worse and they developed into fully fledged rashes that would defy treatment with steroidal based creams. Now reflecting that these might have been times when my exposed skin had come into contact with household dust, mostly made up of dust mite droppings, instead of scratching my skin when these happened I instead rinsed the area off with water or a wet paper towel. Within a minute or two all itching would go away and no rash would form. In reality all the scratching had been doing was break-open the skin and embed the dust even deeper into it, increasing the allergic reaction and thus the itching.

By the early Nineteen Eighties, I had begun to periodically have inner body itching problems, as if the organs themselves were irritated. But how do you scratch an itch inside your body? I couldn't and would just have to wait for the all encompassing sensation to eventually fade away. For the times when I couldn't wait it out, I'd take a cold shower as a last resort, letting the icy water numb my whole body. Yet once I started avoiding red food coloring #3, these issues disappeared as well. On the rare occasion when they'd happened again, I'd check the ingredients and sure enough there was red #3, buried in the list. I was fortunate that it was banned a few years later... Then less fortunate that, as part of the free trade deals of the nineties, it was reintroduced into the country, forcing me to stay on my toes for it ever since.

Though Dr. Smith didn't test me for it, when I talked to him about my bad reaction to the C.T. contrast dye I had recently had, he said, ''You mean iodine?'' It turned out that the common contrast dye was iodine and suddenly something else clicked into place. My entire life, as part of eating, the roof of my mouth would often blister and peel. As this most always happened, I grew up assuming it was just a normal part of eating. It never occurred to me to compare notes with my family members or friends. In the early Nineteen Eighties, after years of public health warnings about too much salt in our diets, I had reduced the amount of salt I added to foods and for some reason the occasions of the blistering and peeling became less frequent. At the time I just assumed I was growing out of that problem but now, in retrospect, I realized it was likely the iodine in the salt that was causing it. Since I've cut iodized salt out of my diet, I've rarely had the problem since. When I still do it is most often at restaurants and I assume they added some iodized salt of their own for flavoring.

When I tell people of that last one they get nervous as they've spent their entire lives hearing that iodine is a necessary nutrient... Actually it was added to salt to reduce the chance of it caking into solid lumps in areas with high humidity. While iodine is needed for some thyroid based functions, we in America get plenty of micro doses from our existing diet and typically don't need the additional dose provided by iodized salt. In the past twenty-eight years being iodized salt free, I've not had any thyroid related problems and I've been virtual free of the inner mouth blisters & peeling that were common place for my first twenty years of life.

For all of these, Dr. Smith offered antigens I could pay for to reduce the adverse affects of each one of these allergens, but that was not to be. After a number of very productive and helpful appointments we discovered that my health insurance wasn't going to cover me seeing him as 'Clinical Ecology' was not yet an accepted field of medicine. Had he just labeled himself 'an allergist', as that was the majority of the work-up he had been doing for me, it would have been covered in full. Instead his appointments weren't covered at all and I was ending up with a huge bill that was beyond any savings I had. All I could do was make little payments each month from my state stipend and in return he told me I could just avoid these various allergens rather than worry about getting the antigens for them.

Given the vast amount of progress we had made, he didn't want to immediately drop me just because my insurance wouldn't pay, there was one more thing to try. Now that we knew of so many allergens to avoid in my diet, he wanted his on site dietician to create a planned diet for me and see if I could now regain my weight while on it and resolve the emaciation that was the major impact to my daily health and routines. I agreed and when I saw her, the diet she recommended was pretty much identical to the canned diet the hospital dietician had recommended six months earlier, without any tailoring for my allergy issues or other diagnosed intolerances. When I noticed this and pointed it out to her, she said it was for me to figure out what things I needed to avoid because of my allergies and intolerances and in her presence I crossed out about half of each daily meal she had provided me.

She couldn't think of alternatives and talked to Dr. Smith about it. He theorized that since I would be avoiding his diagnosed allergens, that my fructose intolerance and fat malabsorption would go away on their own and I no longer needed to avoid those. This put about half of the things I had crossed out back on the menu and the rest was made up for with larger portions of the stuff I didn't have problems with. This new diet now set, there was a new problem. It was more than twice the cost of my monthly food stamp allowance... But Dr. Smith was so sure that the allergen free diet would make a big difference that I would be back to work and off food stamps in no time. So I agreed, spending my full month's worth of food stamps on two weeks worth of food.

Given that this new diet would include more fresh food that needed to be kept cool, I begged my mother not to throw away my food items from the refrigerator for the next two weeks as my new doctor was trying me out on a special diet. She reluctantly agreed. I was on this new allergen free diet for two weeks and could tell within two days that it was doomed as the frequency of massively painful bowel movements, which I sometimes had, now became a daily experience. After the first week, I called his office and told him that I thought we should stop the diet given the side effects. But he felt it was just the brief adjustment of my system to the new diet and these problems would go away by the second week.

When I returned to his office at the end of the second week, I had lost another five pounds. The fastest rate I had lost weight in all these years. He concluded that I shouldn't go with the official diet and instead return to what I had been eating before, but this time avoiding my known allergies as I went along. As a final bit of advice for me before we parted ways, he told me to stay aware of what I ate and came in contact with when I started to have new repetitive bad reactions. If I did, I should check for something new that I was being exposed to and see if eliminating it from my environment or diet made the symptoms go away. This was golden advice that's saved me time and again during all the subsequent years of my life.

As I couldn't afford to keep on seeing him, he asked if there was anything else he could do for me. As my six month stipend of state aid was coming to an end, I asked if he could fill out the medical evaluation part of the forms to renew it for another six months while I waited to hear from Social Security. While he would have normally not done that given that he wasn't a primary care doctor, in my case he agreed to, perhaps feeling guilty that we were ending our doctor patient relationship without him finding the root cause of my weight loss problems. He completed the paperwork and I received notice that the stipend would be extended for another six months.

In just three more months, he would have to leave the state as a number of local physicians, outraged by what they saw as his 'voodoo medical science', went to the state's medical board demanding that his license be revoked. Rather than go through the emotional and financial turmoil of fighting it, he decided to pull up stakes and move to another state where he could practice in peace.

Of all the doctors I have ever gone to, I've felt he was one of the most important ones I met.

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