Career, March!

A couple of people have written asking why I haven't posted an entry lately.  Truth is, I've been doing some thinking.  I won't try to guess what triggered the direction of my thoughts, but I am certain about the decision that they have led me to reach.  Namely, that I have decided to abandon my previous dedication to writing to pursue full time my goal of becoming a practicing doctor of surgery.

I know that some of you may register surprise at my decision; however, I am hoping that you will be kind enough to allow me this opportunity to explain.

For one thing, those who know me are aware that I come from a lower middle-class background. Thus, I have not had the advantages of some whose parents had already cracked "the glass ceiling" of privilege and class that, in my neighborhood, wasn't even visible to the offspring of the working poor.  (There the ceilings, like most glass-bearing structures in hard-scrabble places, were covered over with plywood.  So, we didn't even know they were there, let alone that we should try and crack them.)

In any case, I didn't have the luxury of choice that many of you enjoyed as youngsters.  Had I been so fortunate, I might have exhibited an interest in surgery in my formative years.  After all, my father and paternal grandfather were both barbers and, as anyone knowing the history of that long-standing occupation  could certify, in earlier and perhaps more enlightened times, the town tonsorialist did much of the surgery on members of the local gentry--leeching blood, repairing broken limbs and performing other necessary medical tasks.  Thus, my very lineage puts me in good stead to be a practitioner of the healing arts.

Secondly, I have a natural familiarity with the human body due to my proximity to said vehicle.  I am, so far, in possession of nearly all bodily parts with which I had previously entered the world--having suffered only the removal of a couple of tonsils and a little less than a quarter-inch of skin, both at a very early age and before I had even begun to notice these apportionments.  True, I have only those organs typical to the male members of our species but a long life,  several marriages and having lived through the era of the 1960's has given me a more than ample expertise in the handling of all aspects of the female corpus as well.  (Pay no attention to what any of the members of that tribe might say by way of contradiction.)

So, yes, I am very familiar with the human form.  The very first thing I see when I awake in the morning is the end of my own nose--then, my feet as I struggle to find my slippers.  Next, having stumbled to the bathroom with an overly full bladder....  Well, you get the idea.  The human body is no stranger to me.  Indeed, I have had one for as far back as I can remember.

You may scoff and ask me :"Yes, but what about knowledge?  What about the years of education and training that we currently require of our medical personnel?  The study and the testing?"

Well, all I can say by way of answer is, "There you go again!"

As to testing, I have no objection.  Have any expert you choose ask me any question he or she chooses, but rest assured that I will, in turn, present only answers that feel right to me and that will be gratifying to members of my audience--not those that are learned by rote out of outmoded textbooks concocted by self-declared experts who seek only to obfuscate and confuse.  However, should any of you have need of such verbal pyrotechnics, let me assure you that I can parry with the best of them.  As a frequent viewer of such excellent medical fare as HOUSE, M.D.  (yet another proof of my worthiness for the job), I am familiar with such terms as "neurocystercercosis,"  "syphitis," and the ever-popular "McCune-Albright polystostic fibrous dysplasia."  So, just stick that in your windpipes (tracheae) and smoke it!

You've been brainwashed, of course, by years of exposure to the warped, "gotcha," liberal media into believing that only possessors of esoteric degrees from elitist colleges can be members of the healing fraternity.  Thus,  only "insiders" have been allowed to examine...well...the insides of members of our populace for generations.  The result of this has been long waits at hospitals and soaring prices for procedures which could be eliminated if people like myself were allowed to compete with members of the current medical establishment for potential clients.  And our lack of exposure to medical texts and predetermined procedures might actually serve as a benefit to would-be medicos since we would be freer, with no expectations about an operation, to see things as they are actually occurring rather than to view them through the debilitating lens of experience.  Oh, sure,  we would lose a few patients along the way.  But, gosh darn it, don't the professionals?  Why do you think they call their businesses "practices"?

You're still skeptical, I can tell--as I've grown used to such smirking condescension over the years.  The wrinkled brows, the raised noses, the lips turned down over the edges of martini glasses (resulting in a good deal of spillage and some hefty dry cleaning charges, I might add).  Yes, these are all trademarks of the intellectual Georgetown crowd that has controlled this great land of ours for far too long.

Therefore, it is with this wisdom and with the knowledge that each of us has in us the deep-down ability to aspire to greatness that I hereby announce my self-certification as a doctor of surgery, primoris expertis.  And, to allay some of the reservations harbored by many of my unenlightened peers, I will confine myself, for the present, to merely assisting a doctor five years my senior (I'm 67) while I'm learning the rudiments of the trade.  Of course, I have agreed to mentor him on such occasions when prior knowledge might interfere with intuition and when there is a need for kitchen-table logic and good, gut-given, down-home common sense.  Further and in deference to the plain-spoken aphorisms of our forebears, I agree to limit my earliest efforts solely to the performance of brain surgery and that solely to the followers of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska.

For, in the words of that great American, Henry Ford:  "Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs."