My Dad taught me that. He was a doctor.

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MY FIRST IN A SERIES OF PERSONAL STORIES RELATED TO HEALTHCARE.
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My grandfather was a Christian Scientist. His only son (my father) became a doctor. Figure that one out. But that's half of my lineage—as far as I know it.

My Dad spent his career as Chief of Orthopedic Surgery at the VA Hospital in Providence, RI. As such, he came to hate his employer—the federal government. (I'm very much my father's daughter.)

I'm not sure what year he retired. But, in 1987—the year after my Mom died, at the rather young age of 66—he moved to Maine. So, he had certainly retired by then. He followed my Mom in 1995, at the age of 72. In fact, I had a dream one night in which my Dad, my sister, and I were walking down a grimy city street, beneath a traffic-filled overpass. My Mom approached us and said that it was time for my Dad to join her. He—a chain-smoker—was dead just a few months later, drowned in his own blood from an angiosarcoma that, in three short weeks, destroyed his lungs. (Get it? Overpass...pass over; cars...exhaust...grime...smog...lungs. It was years before I appreciated the semaphoric succinctness of those scanty details. For years now, I've paid attention to my dreams and have kept a dream journal, without fail.)

David L. Brook, M.D.—despite the initials attached to his name—was essentially a mechanic, a bonesetter. He looked down his nose at true medical doctors, dispensers of medicine. He thought of them as little more than pill-pushers.

The word "mechanic" actually describes him quite well. He maintained and repaired our cars on weekends. He was an inventor, a toolmaker, a furniture maker, a gunsmith, a photographer (our laundry room doubled as a darkroom), a fisherman, a fly tier, an electronics enthusiast...a total do-it-yourselfer. The tiny basement furnace room was jam-packed with tools—lathes (yes, plural—he built one of them himself, for rifling the gun barrels of his own handcrafted, antique firearms...actually, I think that lathe crowded our one-car garage), milling machine, bending brake, sanders, grinders, drill press, bandsaws, radial-arm saw...

When we were kids, if one of us (four kids) went to my Dad complaining that we didn't feel well, he would've looked at us as though we had three heads and barked: "Go to bed!" That was about as much as he was involved in our healthcare! Then my Mom took over. She was a superb nurse when we were sick.

Between kindergarten and college, I don't think I saw another doctor more than twice. I'm living proof that doctors are generally unnecessary. As for medication, as a kid, I don't think I was ever offered anything more exotic than aspirin, cough medicine, or throat lozenges. However, with the advent of menstrual cramps, I came to view Ibuprofen as an absolute Godsend for many years.

In hindsight, I think my Dad may've been afraid that we thought that, as a doctor, he wielded a magic wand—which he knew that he didn't. Hence, his perhaps half-terrified barked order: "Go to bed!"

I remember two oft-repeated health-related expressions in our house, when I was growing up:

- "If you catch a cold or flu, don't worry; it'll run its course in about a week. If you take any medicine, it'll only take about seven days."

- "Give it two weeks."

My Dad, who was not a particularly religious or spiritual man, nevertheless knew that he had very little to do with healing. I remember him saying all the time that he would tell his patients: "I can set your broken bone(s). Whether or not you heal after that is between you and God."

And he was terrified of other doctors. "Doctors make mistakes all the time."

According to my Dad, my Mom's life was cut short by an overdose of medication in the emergency room of Rhode Island Hospital. She had been rushed there, hemorrhaging internally and was, allegedly, overdosed on a vasoconstrictor drug (a drug to constrict the blood vessels)—which threw her into a coma for three days. When she emerged from that, her tongue was necrotic (dead) in her mouth. Every time she opened her mouth for the next two and a half weeks (as long as she lived), the stench was stomach-turning. Whenever she tried to eat, she ended up in enormous pain. In hindsight, my Dad thought that perhaps a great deal more of her digestive tract had been deprived of blood and had died, as well.

Being the protective Dad, he didn't allow us to hang around her hospital room much. I didn't realize until two days before she died that she'd never be coming home. And, while protecting us, he, too, went into denial about how badly she was doing. Late one Friday afternoon, he freaked, finally realizing that she was starving to death, and demanded that a feeding tube be inserted into her stomach. But anyone who could do that procedure had already gone home for the weekend. When it was finally done on Monday, it was too late and no help. She was dead the next day or the day after, as I recall. After my Dad shared what he thought had happened in the emergency room, I wallowed in grief and anger for much of the next three years.

On the other hand, brilliant surgeons at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston probably extended my Dad's life by twenty years. But they were mechanics just like him: They replaced worn-out parts. He went through surgery for three or four aneurysms, as well as double heart bypass surgery. In the end though, they entirely misdiagnosed his angiosarcoma. They assured us for the three weeks that he was in their hospital (after coughing up blood one morning in Maine) that they knew what was wrong, they were treating it appropriately, and he'd round a turning point in about two weeks and be fine. (Remember?—the "two weeks" rule.)

My Dad had many good friends at B & W. And everyone went into denial! Had anyone—including us, his kids—merely trusted the evidence before their eyes, they would have assessed the situation differently. But, after an autopsy, we were informed that they'd never before seen a case of that particular variety of cancer at B & W. Had they diagnosed him properly, they wouldn't have had a clue what to do for him. I appreciated the honesty in that admission. I could live with that. Plus, my mother's appearance in that dream had been very helpful. Perhaps we all just rent these physical suits for a certain amount of time—and his was up.

But, just before he went in for surgery, every time, my Dad warned us not to expect to see him alive again. "Doctors make mistakes all the time," he'd say.

These and many of my own personal health-related adventures have led me to have a unique view, I think, of the current healthcare debate in this country. I think it is entirely upside-down and backwards.

I have come to be in awe of the human body and its innate wisdom. Every single cell in our body usually knows exactly what to do in just about any situation and will carry out its task(s) flawlessly—unless our conscious brain or someone else's conscious brain gets in the way and mucks everything up by overriding the system. Or, unless our time's up. These days, I typically spend money in a doctor's office when I forget my father's "give it two weeks" rule (which must include rest and common sense) and panic hastily and unnecessarily about something. Or, when I ignore my own intuition or persistent dream messages. (For example: Alcohol is not good for you—delivered more than occasionally with all kinds of creative imagery. Or, that ground-breaking anger message with its widespread implications that went through my head one morning in crystal clear, plain English: "It has been ruled that you have increased the size of a volcano." A heads up: I forget that message and its various iterations quite frequently. But, admittedly, I often consider and choose to ignore the former.)

And so, too, I have come to be in awe of that vast part of the so-called electromagnetic spectrum that is invisible to our eyes. I have had many experiences of an active, wise, loving, and collaborative invisible world. And I know that there is wa-a-a-a-y more intelligence therein than I either possess or profess—I, who, occasionally, still fancy myself to be something of a designer.

To be continued...