It is July’s swan song today — or, more to the point, here in Iowa, July’s cicada song — the bugs, those buggers, take your pick, in their way, their accustomed way, claxoning mid-summer and providing point to this summer’s counterpoint of unexampled heat.
Two days earlier, on the 29th, and sixteen years before, my father was his own cicada, his own last summer, his life, that day, that very dawn, at an end, his song — his song, all but ignored, as it rep-ratcheted, trilled, rep-rubbed to an end…an early end.
A date, sure, on a calendar, of course, on my calendar.
And, in my case, my mind, the morning I could never again say, “Hi, Dad!”
“And did I tell you, Dad? I love you.”
"That I loved you then. "
"That I loved you always. "
"Always, Dad. "
And, sixteen years later, who could have imagined this.
That, this, that dead man’s oldest son, then a writer, would now be a physician, a physician teaching, each day, other physicians. That that same man’s youngest son would also now himself be a physician. The two of us carrying forward all we learned before.
The hurt then.
The love mostly now.
And, sixteen years now to the day, I am in Kansas City.
At this, the annual medical student conference.
Me, a physician.
Thinking of my father, my father, my dead father these sixteen years later.
And me laughing.
Me laughing with students.
“Yes, this is a great program,” I say, my eyes hiding my life, my pain, this day. “Yes, the residents are terrific. Yes, the faculty are all you could ever hope for. And, yes, you, you, belong here.”
And, yes, me laughing.
Even as I try to hide what I cannot hide.
Me, again, laughing.
“Yes,” I’d tell then, if they’d asked, reading my eyes.
“My father died sixteen years ago, this day, this very day, this very morning. A phone call. A phone call at four-thirty. Yeah, Eastern Time. Me in Vermont. A phone call from two brothers at a phone in Seattle. ‘He’s gone,’ one brother tells me. 'Dad’s gone. Few minutes ago. Gone. Maybe it’s for the best.’”
For the best, maybe.
But my father, my father, is dead and lost to me and anyone near me.
And, yes, yes, I still hurt, yes…I still hurt.
And you don’t know that. It’s not your fault, I know.
But still, I hurt, I hurt…
And no one in Kansas City knows to care. And I’m now in Kansas City.
And, yes, in this sea of med students, residents, most young, most so very young, all with lives to live, with lives so much to live, I’m alone.
So alone.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
My son, our son…
My son, our son, Brendan, who for almost three years had been in New Orleans, doing what he, by himself, could do to help those he can to recover from Katrina, is now in Haiti.
Keep in mind that when he went to New Orleans, this parent’s advice was pretty much limited to, “Watch your ass.”
“Yeah, Pops,” I think he, hardly convincingly, told me then.
And then there was that bullet.
That bullet.
Shattering the drywall, only inches above my son’s head in the shower, while my son, my loved son, himself showered.
And, then, more bullets.
In rooms below.
In the very same apartment. From somewhere in the street. From somewhere in the street that might have, could have, killed my son.
My good, my loved, my second son.
And now Haiti.
“Watch your ass,” I tell him again on the phone.
“Ten days, Pops. Ten days, I’m off to Haiti,” he tells me.
This, the reckless son.
He, as a boy, given to barreling full-speed down a Vermont dirt-road hill on a bike, his mother holding her breath behind him, his father never knowing until years later.
He, who, as a kid, saw an electrified fence and saw an opportunity for a charge, even if it meant putting his stream of pee in the line of fire.
He, who showed up for his college graduation road-rashed—chin, legs, arms—after doing a handlebar-sault racing, pre-grad, post-alcohol, to a bar.
And now Haiti…
Keep in mind that when he went to New Orleans, this parent’s advice was pretty much limited to, “Watch your ass.”
“Yeah, Pops,” I think he, hardly convincingly, told me then.
And then there was that bullet.
That bullet.
Shattering the drywall, only inches above my son’s head in the shower, while my son, my loved son, himself showered.
And, then, more bullets.
In rooms below.
In the very same apartment. From somewhere in the street. From somewhere in the street that might have, could have, killed my son.
My good, my loved, my second son.
And now Haiti.
“Watch your ass,” I tell him again on the phone.
“Ten days, Pops. Ten days, I’m off to Haiti,” he tells me.
This, the reckless son.
He, as a boy, given to barreling full-speed down a Vermont dirt-road hill on a bike, his mother holding her breath behind him, his father never knowing until years later.
He, who, as a kid, saw an electrified fence and saw an opportunity for a charge, even if it meant putting his stream of pee in the line of fire.
He, who showed up for his college graduation road-rashed—chin, legs, arms—after doing a handlebar-sault racing, pre-grad, post-alcohol, to a bar.
And now Haiti…
Saturday, April 17, 2010
17 April, These Years Later
Again, and, for me, the 59th time, the calendar has turned to April 17th, and this time a Saturday.
Eighteen years ago, on a Friday, a very good and Good Friday, Karen and I welcomed Dónal, as in Dónal Óg (Dónal the younger, in Irish), the lad who to this day remains the youngest of our brood.
We lived then in northern Vermont, and it snowed the night before what would be this particular lad’s birthday.
By itself, that would not have been a problem, given that his birth, like that of the other four before his, was planned. As much as anyone can plan, anyway, a home birth. With a midwife doing, well, the midwifing.
But again, it snowed. And it snowed. And still it snowed. All through the night.
By the time the midwife and her assistant arrived, it had taken them an hour or more longer than the usual hour to get to our home from theirs, and by then there were eight inches of new snow on the ground.
But, happily, they arrived—arrived, as it turned out, much sooner than would this latest son, who, let’s face it, saw fit to yo-yo on his umbilical cord for many of the delayed hours of his eventual 14-hour entrance to the world.
Now, do keep in mind that Karen and I back then were no strangers to long labors.
After all, our first child, our very first child, Declan, said hello only after 43 hours—yes, 43 hours, as in, yes, 43 hours—of labor.
To this day, I tell anyone who will listen of the walks that Karen and I took during those ineluctably memorable 43 hours, walks along the mostly wooded Potomac bike trail in Alexandria, Virginia, where we then lived.
In the course of those walks (again, we’re talking 43 hours of labor—yes, 43 unforgettable hours—and lots of walks), any number of folks, whether jogging, walking or cycling, passed us. And many of those folks had to be witness to Karen—the breadth of her belly signaling her obvious condition and her just-as-obvious distress—doubling over with contractions, me at her side, both of us in the woods, either and both of us far, far from the hospital at which any of those witnesses would have assumed we belonged.
So, go ahead.
Imagine yourself as one of those joggers, your earbuds plugged then into your pre-iPod Walkman, and you, skipping footfall by footfall, along that path, only to see this all-too-evidently gravid woman hunkered over in pain on your jogging path, your jogging path, deep into the woods, nowhere near a hospital. And all at once you’re thinking, “What the hell is that woman doing here, and what’s with that guy holding her hand and now and then cradling her shoulders and telling her to breathe, just breathe!”
I joked later—and have done so many times since—that our first son, sensing his parents’ liberal proclivities (remember, this was 1982), was braced, arms and legs akimbo in utero, vowing, “Reagan’s president. I’m not coming out. I’m not coming out until the odds are in my favor!”
But we’re talking April 17th now, in 2010 now, and we're talking the fifth of those five kids.
That kid, that son, that youngest and good son, Dónal, did, indeed, enter the world on a cushion of eight inches of snow—and, yes, in mid-April and in northern Vermont—did have those hands that touched him first be those midwives’ hands, did do without a first name (another story in itself, especially then, especially in wee Peacham, Vermont) for a week, maybe more, did become the occasion for evening meals for at least a week, maybe more, from the same neighbors who wondered after the kid’s name, and to whom, to this day, Karen and I are still grateful.
And now that same Dónal is eighteen—that son, our youngest son, is eighteen.
And Karen (forgive me, Karen, for reminding you of the painfully obvious) and I are eighteen years older than we were then.
And, God, we were so young then: you, Karen; me, Karen; the other and older kids, Karen.
But this piece is meant for that son Dónal, born this April 17th, those 18 years ago.
Born into a family that already included, besides Karen and me, four other children, all born at home, all, to some or greater extent, schooled at home. And that Dónal, from the start, a child gentler on his parents than those before, whether because of his own nature or that of his parents, already denatured by his older siblings.
In the end, what needs to be said is this and only this: that this child, while fifth in line—and without in any way taking anything away from any of his other siblings—has, mostly, on every and any day, brought joy to his mother and his father.
And for that, Dónal Óg, your mother and I are grateful. So very grateful, even as we wish you joy and love on this, your one and only 18th birthday.
© 2010 Dónal Kevin Gordon
Eighteen years ago, on a Friday, a very good and Good Friday, Karen and I welcomed Dónal, as in Dónal Óg (Dónal the younger, in Irish), the lad who to this day remains the youngest of our brood.
We lived then in northern Vermont, and it snowed the night before what would be this particular lad’s birthday.
By itself, that would not have been a problem, given that his birth, like that of the other four before his, was planned. As much as anyone can plan, anyway, a home birth. With a midwife doing, well, the midwifing.
But again, it snowed. And it snowed. And still it snowed. All through the night.
By the time the midwife and her assistant arrived, it had taken them an hour or more longer than the usual hour to get to our home from theirs, and by then there were eight inches of new snow on the ground.
But, happily, they arrived—arrived, as it turned out, much sooner than would this latest son, who, let’s face it, saw fit to yo-yo on his umbilical cord for many of the delayed hours of his eventual 14-hour entrance to the world.
Now, do keep in mind that Karen and I back then were no strangers to long labors.
After all, our first child, our very first child, Declan, said hello only after 43 hours—yes, 43 hours, as in, yes, 43 hours—of labor.
To this day, I tell anyone who will listen of the walks that Karen and I took during those ineluctably memorable 43 hours, walks along the mostly wooded Potomac bike trail in Alexandria, Virginia, where we then lived.
In the course of those walks (again, we’re talking 43 hours of labor—yes, 43 unforgettable hours—and lots of walks), any number of folks, whether jogging, walking or cycling, passed us. And many of those folks had to be witness to Karen—the breadth of her belly signaling her obvious condition and her just-as-obvious distress—doubling over with contractions, me at her side, both of us in the woods, either and both of us far, far from the hospital at which any of those witnesses would have assumed we belonged.
So, go ahead.
Imagine yourself as one of those joggers, your earbuds plugged then into your pre-iPod Walkman, and you, skipping footfall by footfall, along that path, only to see this all-too-evidently gravid woman hunkered over in pain on your jogging path, your jogging path, deep into the woods, nowhere near a hospital. And all at once you’re thinking, “What the hell is that woman doing here, and what’s with that guy holding her hand and now and then cradling her shoulders and telling her to breathe, just breathe!”
I joked later—and have done so many times since—that our first son, sensing his parents’ liberal proclivities (remember, this was 1982), was braced, arms and legs akimbo in utero, vowing, “Reagan’s president. I’m not coming out. I’m not coming out until the odds are in my favor!”
But we’re talking April 17th now, in 2010 now, and we're talking the fifth of those five kids.
That kid, that son, that youngest and good son, Dónal, did, indeed, enter the world on a cushion of eight inches of snow—and, yes, in mid-April and in northern Vermont—did have those hands that touched him first be those midwives’ hands, did do without a first name (another story in itself, especially then, especially in wee Peacham, Vermont) for a week, maybe more, did become the occasion for evening meals for at least a week, maybe more, from the same neighbors who wondered after the kid’s name, and to whom, to this day, Karen and I are still grateful.
And now that same Dónal is eighteen—that son, our youngest son, is eighteen.
And Karen (forgive me, Karen, for reminding you of the painfully obvious) and I are eighteen years older than we were then.
And, God, we were so young then: you, Karen; me, Karen; the other and older kids, Karen.
But this piece is meant for that son Dónal, born this April 17th, those 18 years ago.
Born into a family that already included, besides Karen and me, four other children, all born at home, all, to some or greater extent, schooled at home. And that Dónal, from the start, a child gentler on his parents than those before, whether because of his own nature or that of his parents, already denatured by his older siblings.
In the end, what needs to be said is this and only this: that this child, while fifth in line—and without in any way taking anything away from any of his other siblings—has, mostly, on every and any day, brought joy to his mother and his father.
And for that, Dónal Óg, your mother and I are grateful. So very grateful, even as we wish you joy and love on this, your one and only 18th birthday.
© 2010 Dónal Kevin Gordon
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Go figure…
Ah, health care. And, as a physician, a family physician, I should care.
And I do. I truly do.
In fact, more than ten years ago, back in rural Vermont, I was even then mindful of those who hadn’t what I had.
And, yet, I was then a freelance writer, not a physician, buying health insurance at the going rate, even if the going rate then didn’t compensate for the fact that I was relatively young and healthy, as was my wife, Karen, and our five children.
Truth is, we cost good ol’ Blue Cross nothing, not one cent, over some 15 years, and all the more so given that all five of those children were born at home, with midwives in attendance, midwives whom Blue Cross would not acknowledge as professionals, let alone cover.
Consider this: Karen and I paid cash for each of those five births, some $1,200 or so each, covering both prenatal care and delivery, this despite making the monthly Blue Cross premium, month after month, year after year after year.
But, had Karen had the usual prenatal care, with an OB doing the deal for thirty-something weeks, and then the delivery and then the post-partum visit, at, let’s say two or three times what a midwife would have charged for the full Monty, Blue Cross would have obliged, or mostly obliged, at least insofar as its “prearranged” contract with that OB, a dollar figure always lower than the billed figure (yet another inequity in a health care system rife with inequities) for those with insurance.
And, get this, had Karen had the C-section that her first 43-hour labor would likely have bought her, we’re talking beaucoup bucks, to the tune of maybe $10,000 or more that Blue Cross would merrily have paid the OB, the hospital and anyone else with a hand stretched in our direction.
Yet, none of that takes into account the $50,000 that health care cost my family over a three-year period in the late 1990s.
I’m talking premiums, deductibles, co-pays, in a span that encompassed an ectopic pregnancy, our daughter’s hospitalization for an asthma exacerbation, my own then and still inexplicable health problems, another child’s visit to the local ER, and so on.
We had that money then, only because, as a freelance scribbler, I worked hard to keep a cushion against what I, preternaturally Irish, saw as the inevitable rainy day. Even so, those health care bills those three years wiped us out, to the penny. And afterwards I worked, day, night, weekends, for another three years, to build that cushion back.
A decade and more later, no one is better off.
Not me.
Not you.
Not any of us.
Even I, now a physician, am no better off, health insurance-wise, than I was as a freelance writer ten years ago.
I still have the same kind of health savings account, then called a medical savings account, with the same $5,000 family deductible. The only thing, if anything, that is different, is the premium, which, I think, and if I remember correctly, is, believe it or not, lower today.
Still, a decade later and not much difference.
And the fact that the last ten years transformed me from a freelance writer, fortunate enough to afford health insurance, to a physician, arguably even more fortunate, matters little.
I am, as much as any employee anywhere, at risk of that single silver bullet, in terms of uncompensated health care, let alone the bullet to the heart that some catastrophic event might occasion.
Ah, America!
Home of the free…land of the brave…
A country, at least in terms of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, of equals.
But, of course...not.
I have health insurance. Someone else has more. Somebody else has less. And all of us who have, pay the price for those who have not.
That is what it is.
In the end, given any amount of health care costs, the patient with no health insurance will pay nothing, even after any number of attempts on the part of any collection agency. And you and I and anyone else with any semblance of health insurance will pay more, our premiums, in part, going to cover the pseudo-inflated cost of our own health problems — and, by extension, the uncompensated cost of any and all uninsured patients seen in that hospital or the nearest, this clinic or the one down the street.
So, yeah, what a country.
The richest in the world, able to fund one war, or multiple wars, even on spurious reasons, on the spur of any moment, even at the cost of debt passed to our grandchildren, and likely to our great-grandchildren.
But wave even a dollar in the direction of universal health care — a right, a human right, let's face it, in any country, let alone this, the most prosperous on the planet — and you can expect a tea bag up ‘side the head, a tea bag tagged with the words, “socialist medicine.”
And yet we, those tea partiers and we teed-off partiers alike, spend the most on health care and, for our money, come up short, in terms of quality care, at thirty-something worldwide for the dollar spent.
Hmm-m…
Go figure…
And among those figures are the nearly 50 million fellow Americans — one of every six of us — who tonight sleep without health insurance; who tomorrow may use the emergency room for routine primary care, and who the next may find their homes, their families, their futures hostage to a hospital bill they can never pay; 50 million fellow Americans who are, there but for the grace of a job and for job-related health insurance, you or me or anyone you or me may now or ever love.
© 2010 Dónal Kevin Gordon
And I do. I truly do.
In fact, more than ten years ago, back in rural Vermont, I was even then mindful of those who hadn’t what I had.
And, yet, I was then a freelance writer, not a physician, buying health insurance at the going rate, even if the going rate then didn’t compensate for the fact that I was relatively young and healthy, as was my wife, Karen, and our five children.
Truth is, we cost good ol’ Blue Cross nothing, not one cent, over some 15 years, and all the more so given that all five of those children were born at home, with midwives in attendance, midwives whom Blue Cross would not acknowledge as professionals, let alone cover.
Consider this: Karen and I paid cash for each of those five births, some $1,200 or so each, covering both prenatal care and delivery, this despite making the monthly Blue Cross premium, month after month, year after year after year.
But, had Karen had the usual prenatal care, with an OB doing the deal for thirty-something weeks, and then the delivery and then the post-partum visit, at, let’s say two or three times what a midwife would have charged for the full Monty, Blue Cross would have obliged, or mostly obliged, at least insofar as its “prearranged” contract with that OB, a dollar figure always lower than the billed figure (yet another inequity in a health care system rife with inequities) for those with insurance.
And, get this, had Karen had the C-section that her first 43-hour labor would likely have bought her, we’re talking beaucoup bucks, to the tune of maybe $10,000 or more that Blue Cross would merrily have paid the OB, the hospital and anyone else with a hand stretched in our direction.
Yet, none of that takes into account the $50,000 that health care cost my family over a three-year period in the late 1990s.
I’m talking premiums, deductibles, co-pays, in a span that encompassed an ectopic pregnancy, our daughter’s hospitalization for an asthma exacerbation, my own then and still inexplicable health problems, another child’s visit to the local ER, and so on.
We had that money then, only because, as a freelance scribbler, I worked hard to keep a cushion against what I, preternaturally Irish, saw as the inevitable rainy day. Even so, those health care bills those three years wiped us out, to the penny. And afterwards I worked, day, night, weekends, for another three years, to build that cushion back.
A decade and more later, no one is better off.
Not me.
Not you.
Not any of us.
Even I, now a physician, am no better off, health insurance-wise, than I was as a freelance writer ten years ago.
I still have the same kind of health savings account, then called a medical savings account, with the same $5,000 family deductible. The only thing, if anything, that is different, is the premium, which, I think, and if I remember correctly, is, believe it or not, lower today.
Still, a decade later and not much difference.
And the fact that the last ten years transformed me from a freelance writer, fortunate enough to afford health insurance, to a physician, arguably even more fortunate, matters little.
I am, as much as any employee anywhere, at risk of that single silver bullet, in terms of uncompensated health care, let alone the bullet to the heart that some catastrophic event might occasion.
Ah, America!
Home of the free…land of the brave…
A country, at least in terms of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, of equals.
But, of course...not.
I have health insurance. Someone else has more. Somebody else has less. And all of us who have, pay the price for those who have not.
That is what it is.
In the end, given any amount of health care costs, the patient with no health insurance will pay nothing, even after any number of attempts on the part of any collection agency. And you and I and anyone else with any semblance of health insurance will pay more, our premiums, in part, going to cover the pseudo-inflated cost of our own health problems — and, by extension, the uncompensated cost of any and all uninsured patients seen in that hospital or the nearest, this clinic or the one down the street.
So, yeah, what a country.
The richest in the world, able to fund one war, or multiple wars, even on spurious reasons, on the spur of any moment, even at the cost of debt passed to our grandchildren, and likely to our great-grandchildren.
But wave even a dollar in the direction of universal health care — a right, a human right, let's face it, in any country, let alone this, the most prosperous on the planet — and you can expect a tea bag up ‘side the head, a tea bag tagged with the words, “socialist medicine.”
And yet we, those tea partiers and we teed-off partiers alike, spend the most on health care and, for our money, come up short, in terms of quality care, at thirty-something worldwide for the dollar spent.
Hmm-m…
Go figure…
And among those figures are the nearly 50 million fellow Americans — one of every six of us — who tonight sleep without health insurance; who tomorrow may use the emergency room for routine primary care, and who the next may find their homes, their families, their futures hostage to a hospital bill they can never pay; 50 million fellow Americans who are, there but for the grace of a job and for job-related health insurance, you or me or anyone you or me may now or ever love.
© 2010 Dónal Kevin Gordon
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