Summer stars

The flags fly in distress on Warrenton Avenue.

Every morning I drive Hartford’s West end on the way to work.  Hartford is a sad, strange, crumbling town. It was the center of the American intellectual universe in the 1870s when Mark Twain and HB Stowe lived down the road and American publishing  and insurance empires thrived on the banks of the Connecticut  river.

The large Victorian mansions have gone to seed; their decaying hulks still lurk amid the  empty lots and homeless shelters in our northern end.

  The West End is a little different.  The large houses are still in good repair, Mark Twain’s house still boasts a lovely multi colored slate tile roof.  The   mansions’ occupants work in the city and have  money enough  to maintain  their houses in good repair.  The neighborhood  is  populated  by restless, radical people who send their children to private school. They hang signs on their houses, “ End This Endless War “ and   “US out of Iraq.”   Rainbow flags adorn a fair number of homes.

I am startled by the number of American flags hanging  from the ramparts.  They are universally upside down, the sign of warning, distress. One must  never  sail by a boat with a reversed  flag, someone  is in trouble.

         The flags hang upside down. Someone is in trouble.

I haven’t  been sleeping these nights. I am uncertain why. The high dose steroids I  restarted to fight the Graft Versus host disease play havoc with my internal clock.  My leg cramps strike about 3 AM, catapulting me from bed.

         Doesn’t matter. It’s 3 AM and I am up for the day, ready to prowl the internet,  seek solace in the hot tub.

         I  once dismissed this 400  gallon tub of fermenting water as the ultimate bourgeois purchase.  When I see a hot tub, my mind  flashes to the ancient joke:

How many Californians does it  take to screw in a  light blub?

Californians don’t screw in  light bulbs they screw in hot tubs.

We lack sufficient  property to  frolic nude in  our hot tub, but the 101 degree water kills my leg cramps as efficiently  as an injection of  succinylcholine. 

So for this, I am grateful.

         I lie in the hot tub and examine the stars. At some point I suggested  placing  the tub in a  gazebo- like enclosure. Cyn declined, and she was right. Contemplating the stars is crucial when undergoing hydrotherapy in the hot tub. 

         I think of New Zealand, where we  biked a few  years ago.  The stars there are different. I finally saw my beloved Alpha Centuri, the star closest to earth, the subject of Science fiction intrigue. The stars there are upside down. The constellations were created  in the North and didn’t translate well to the southern hemisphere.  All the constellations stand on their heads

Orion skids across the sky on his skull  in New Zealand.

The stars are upside down. They are in trouble.

I was a nerd. I was a geek.

I love astronomy.

I glance up for comfort and the stars are all wrong.

All wrong in West Hartford  at 4 AM on a late August night.

All wrong.
Shakespeare wrote of the terror when day switches places with night, it’s how I feel when the wrong stars appear in my troubled skies.

And yesterday the owl  did sit

Even at noon-day upon the marketplace,

Hooting and shrieking.

Vega should float serenity at the apex of the sky, along with Deneb and Altair, and yet my summer friends are absent. 

from this brave overhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire. It appears no other thing to me than a vile and pestilent conflagration of vapor.

Orion the hunter says hi.

Orion should not be saying hi. Orion is my winter friend; He informs me snow should be on the ground.   I wait every late fall for the Big E   Exposition  and for  the  Hunter and Sirius, his trusty dog , to patrol the frosty night sky.

 These are difficult times

The very stars are askew.

"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
 That ever I was born to set it right!"

My universe is  altered, changed these days. I function, but function in pain.   Orion walks the night sky.

 One can see winter star in summer.  All it takes is a little Graft Versus Host disease, a little mouth pain, a little muscle cramp, a little existential terror that one’s condition will never change. At 4 AM, the stars in the August sky match those seen in winter at dusk.

They never mentioned this in the transplant brochure, that  an allogenic  transplant will make  winter stars appear on hot desultory summer nights.

One day  I’ll feel better

One day the stars will return to normal.

Until then, Orion and Sirius will patrol my summer  skies.

The woman screamed

You need a doctor! She was only trying to help, I know . I popped into the  CVS to pick up  gauze,  tape,  non stick  dressings,  antibiotics. You know, the stuff one usually ends up buying after the first day of a 100 -mile  bike  trip.

I looked like an extra from a zombie movie. Blood, every color of the crimson spectrum, flowed down my left leg, pooling on my high tech  sock. The effect was, and is, highly Hollywood, the zombies have taken an unhealthy bite from my kneecap,  and rivulets of unclogging clot  are starting to saturate my clothing.


Fun day, right?  The path to gore town is too tediuous to relate here, but includes new blood clots, anti coagulants and most importantly, a fall from my bike exactly 47.5 miles ago when I was the proud owner of 5 quarts of blood.
But that isn't the point of the story
Honestly, how do you women do it? How do you casually manage  5 quarts of sticky embarrassing red ooze while trying to have a life filled with dinner parties, white outfits and , more to the point,  vigorous exercise that  tends to unleash the red sticky flood gates?
I am falling.  I am falling behind.
The family, yours truly non withstanding, are going through miraculous rebirth. I burst with pride over Cyn who is thriving in a potential new managerial job. My heart sings for jeff, starting his second year at med school, cool and confident, reassured he chose the proper path in life.  Abber Dab is growing too, starting her new job, driving the roads in her 2011 silver honda civic. And dan.... Well,  as they say, he is well along his chosen career path, world domination.
And then there's me. My feet are doughy little muffins , the result of a lack of anti coagulation. The river of death actually courses down my left leg.  Cyn is negotiating a new contract , and she has used the phrase " my chronically sick husband" in her negotiations and here's the sad part: it's true.  I'm not fooling anyone " you're getting better" she says, but she says it in the same tone they use to describe the dead guy in the Monty Python " bring out your dead" sketch.  I am falling / I am falling/ and she is calling..
Kafka is such cliche but here I am ,Gregor Samsa, clinging to a wall as my family waits . We know how the story ends.  They are moving on and I'm scaring a  poor woman at the Northampton cvs

At what point do I run dry?

My dear brother just called in a panic, apparently  the blog implies I am  hospitalized.  I am at home,  Cyn cleaned up the mess at the Hotel.  Thanks, hon.

Falling, I am falling, but she keeps calling me home again.
Cant leave the stage  when I have such a devoted audience. 

It rains

ouch

It rains .  I wander.  The cabin lies in the woods,  20 miles south of the Canadian border. As is always the case it is 3:59 AM.
Always on the cusp of a new day.
Joe and Jenna are in love
Joe and Jenna are getting married.  I've been asked to officiate.  They are already married in the state of Vermont so my officiating  is moot at best.   They are married in the eyes of  the  IRS.  If Joe takes up with a waitress tonight, he'll have some splaining to do. They need some bald old guy to make up stories, seal the deal.

As it turns out, I can't discuss my most ancient  yet touching Joe-related anecdote.
 Joe's a good guy.  He did nothing wrong really.  He made the mistake of being  3 and being attacked by a jellyfish lurking in the Long Island  sound.  It’s an  embarrassing story due to the site of the bite and his horrified  expression.  It’s a sad day for any three year old to suddenly realize that nature doesn’t play fair, that we have a thousand  vulnerabilities.  The story I am able to relate at the wedding  isn't as juicy, it involves his  frolicking nude in his baby sisters’ blow- up pool   Harmless story, I guess,  until some lawyer  colleague tries to discredit Joe by  implying he's the sort of lawyer who spends  his days naked  and potentially drunk in a kiddie pool on a hot summer day

I've done worse.

I mention this because I love Joe.  I mention this story because I am honored that he and Jenna have asked me to officiate at their wedding.  I mention this story because it connects us with one another.

Most important, I mention this because now its 4:30 AM and I am watching the Social Network the Mark Zuckenberg Facebook story. Im sitting in our cabin, watching  Mark’s life unfold on my I pad and think “  Well,  Mr Big shot  Billionaire,  no one asked you to talk about  all the close connections you’ve made in your life.  Your Billions mean nothing  at the end of the day and you fly  across the world in your private Jet.”
I allow myself 20 minutes of sanctimonious  posturing   and then the Buddists spoil it. As they sometimes do.
I mention this because it's a Koen, an epigram that let's us glance at our  4 15 am selves

I am over whelmed by  glibness, false pride. I allow  myself 30 blessed moments of  self satisfaction, 30 minutes of Sally Field crowing "you like me, you like me."
The moment slips away, thanks to Zen Buddhism.  Zen teaches all possession is theft, whether the bijou in question is a gulf airstream  5 or a dear friend.
Possession is misery. All possession  is misery.
 In the end we are alone.
How do we address this paradox, how do we live in this world of pain?   Tell me quickly, I have to inspire the  newlyweds and I can hear the Sysco truck in the driveway, delivering the ice cream and Champagne.  I have to convince them with a wave of my arms and a false lurking baritone that  life can be wonderful. Otherwise, they definitely over paid for the  make your own sundae bar.

The answer  lies  in the detail, amid  the  angels in the architecture  . we live in  flashes of joy, of hope of memory. We live at weddings, in between chapters of wonderful books. We live in  between courses of delicious food, we live in those five  extra seconds when we realize the last comment  our oldest  and dearest friend made truly was was hysterical.

It goes beyond that.  The message is simple: Sometimes there are wonderful things that wait for us just beyond the corner.  Jelly fish lurk, but so does a perfect italian meal served in a small cafe .  The IRS is just finishing its touches on our subpoena
 but so  too lurks the most wonderful art exhibit at the Met.
We live in the single  precious moments before we realize life is short,  pointless and painful. We live in the 10 minutes  the pain suddenly and inexplicably disappears
We live between jelly fish bites,  in-between the rain drops, we live in the arms of those we love.

The secret? Just know the pain will stop, and in life , despite evidence to the contrary, the jellyfish will give you an occasional break. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll  say a few simple words while officiating at a wedding that  the happy couple will carry for the rest of their lives, long after you’re gone.


I love you, joe and Jenna.

obama care

“You must really hate Obama.”

I hear this weekly and it still disorients.  The message is that the affordable care act is the worst public health policy since female genital mutilation and Barack’s misguided polices are destroying our country.

            The thing is; they’re not.  Obama care is mostly wonderful.  People who never received preventive healthcare are now being treated.   Fewer people will die of colon cancer, stroke, and diabetes.  Ultimately , my insurance rates will drop as  patients undergo more preventive  healthcare.  A colonoscopy costs  $250. Treating metastatic colon cancer  costs  over  $50,000.   The real question is: why do benign,  helpful and kind spirited  policies  elicit such blind hatred?

Two stories.

A Genie appears before a Russian peasant. “You have two wishes. You may wish for anything.  Gold, power, immortality. Just name it.”  The Russian thinks a bit.

“I have no milk. I would like a cow.”

Done! a cow  appears. What’s next?

The old man thinks.   “OK, he says, I want you to kill my neighbor’s cow.”

 Point is, there is no success unless one’s neighbor suffers. 

In an updated version of this story,   the  peasant  works at  Whole Foods and receives   subsidized healthcare through his job .  Suddenly, his  foolish, slothful  neighbor, who works at  McDonalds and doesn’t receive health care,  is granted  health benefits.   Our Whole Foods worker persevered and obtained a job that came with healthcare. Now his benefits will come with an increased deductable to subsidize his  neighbor’s  newly acquired  Obama care. He is not his brother’s keeper. He resents chipping  in for  the new benefits.

     Story two

A few years ago, I suggested universal, compulsory vaccination   was a public duty, a civic responsibility.    After all, I reasoned, If your getting the measles vaccine protects me against s disease I am unable to be vaccinated against, you have a duty to be vaccinated

            I was amazed by the hate mail.   “Your  disease is not my problem”  I was told reputedly in  ( mostly) anonymous e mails. People felt they shouldn’t be forced to risk their lives to help others.

Healthcare is similar :   Your Obama care  colonoscopy  raises everyone’s insurance premiums.  By forcing  everyone to enroll in health care,   everyone  subsidizes  everyone else’s treatments.    This is painfully true for me: The costs for my stem cell transplant  was borne by everyone at Hartford Healthcare systems. I try to compensate by bringing in brownies, but  I suspect my  high carb  gifts are just provoking more diabetes among my  colleagues.   Sorry

My bleeding heart  is glad to  pay for others’  colonoscopies and blood screenings, if it will    spare  others the misery of  receiving treatment for  colon cancer.

But this begs the question: How and why did we become so mean?   When  did churches  stop  preaching the golden rule? When did  we  stop being our brothers’’  keepers?   This is the real disturbing part of   the story.   When did altruism become a weakness?  The Obama hated implies a nation of bitter malcontents, evokes a society where generosity and societal concern have mutated into undesirable traits.

The uninsured poor are   victims of their own sloth, stupidity, and greed.   I am aware that if I didn’t have a working spouse, I would not have health care. I wouldn’t have undergone my stem cell transplant, What if I lived in Mississippi? The answer is easy. I would be dead.  What amazes me that I am not unique.  Doesn’t the governor of Mississippi know anyone who contracted cancer?  Doesn’t he know  someone  so injured at work that he or she couldn’t work again?  I find it hard to believe the reason southern states don’t push for universal healthcare is that everyone there is so darn healthy.   Doesn’t anyone one watch Paula Dean?

Obama care has been a lifesaver for many. People are undergoing their colonoscopies,  receiving their  medications.  

I dislike Obama care because, suddenly, 60,000 people now have insurance in Connecticut and they need to be seen.

light blue states: No expansion of medicare. Dark blue:  increased coverage. Is there a trend  here?

Every week, the providers are asked to work more hours, see more patients as a direct result of expanding coverage.   As a lazy, tired, chronically ill patient I have issues with Obama care, sure. I have to work harder. But that’s no reason to hate the guy.

How are you feeling?

"So,  Can I ask... how do you feel?"

Meeting New Patients.  The ultimate  wild card, blind date, wild ride.  Anything can happen.   You meet someone new,  who knows  if they need pain medication, anti psychotics, an air tight alibi?

These folks need a new doctor, their old doc is retiring. Two rules in modern medicine:
 1) The best psychiatrists take only  cash and 2) The best internists don't accept  new patients.   I sympathize  with the psychiatrists.  Insurance does not reimburse the talking cure.


"Your  staff says you've been (  beat)  sick and you're back part time. How do you feel?"

Boundaries.  My staff has been overly  protective.  I appreciate it, but  really,  is my medical history  pertinent?  Of course it is.

I'm caught off balance. I should ask the questions.

" How do you feel?"  I flash on an old girlfriend,  who would reply " I have a mild headache" whenever asked about her health.

Turns out, I have a mild headache

 More to the point what's an appropriate  answer?
I try out responses :

"Its none of your Goddamn business"
" I'm great! how are you?"

They have a right to know. They have a right to know if I am  in the big fade, they need to know if their doctor is a ghost  slowly  slipping the surly bonds of a 15 minute office visit.

 it's none of their business.

Aren't  there laws about this? Aren't there laws that   keep ones medical  history a secret, isn't the state of my health privileged  information?
On the other hand, I ask  the most  intimate, complex questions of strangers   so  it  seems fair to give an honest, non sarcastic response
I answer  accurately, if not a wee bit curt:  "I have good days and bad days."

"So.... is this a good day?"
It is not.  It is not a good day.  I glance at my arms,  now covered with purple, livid  splotches, the  result of  taking an anti fungal along with coumadin. The  fungal mediation has  shorted my liver, leaving me unable to produce  clotting factor.
This is , in itself, not critical, unless of course, the bleeding is in my brain

Did I just say I had a headache? Uh oh.

Quick, do serial 7s.... 100-7 is...93.. 93 minus 7 is... is what?

No ifs ands or buts

Spell world backward

Draw a clock, make it 10;30

You are not dying

That would be bad.

I am worried.  Am I bleeding into my Pons?   I call  Jim, my cardiologist to adjust my coumadin dose.  His advise disorients me.

"Don't have rigorous sex" is his advice.


He's not joking.
Do I mention this to my patients ?

 ' I'm OK as long as I avoid vigorous sex?" I'm OK if I avoid the  Gym, sharpening  axes and the  Venus butterfly?

I'm clearly flummoxed.

The patient smiles sympathetically .

"DO you think you;re getting better?"

I haven't the vaguest idea.

"Better?"  Any pain free day  is better
Now I'm just whining.
But I need to see new patients.

There arent many GPs out there any more.  When our  children contemplate med school, we  sing some version of " Mommy don't let your babies grow up to be internists."  Isn't that what we tell Jeff?    He'll emerge from state  med school a quarter million in debt. That's an awful lot of sore throats or one knee replacement
I smile, stalling for time.

 "I have every intention of  increasing my hours, returning to work, hanging around here" as I struggle to  add a note of sincerity.


I just received  a memo "Dr Weinreb is not taking new patients" Why?    Something I did? said? didn't do? I am grateful, actually. Although my salary increases when my patient numbers increases, making money is not on my mind today.


 The patient looks doubtful.   Maybe she can find a  Doctor who isn't covered with Gin Blossoms.

I ask a few more questions, make sure they  see my diplomas from Cornell and SUNY upstate to prove Im not a fraud.

Perhaps the headache is starting to resolve.

Great. ask me again..... how am I feeling?

A sovereign Cure

It’s 4:30 AM. I am wide-awake.   I pat myself down, conduct a quick Pain inventory. The Foot report trickles in, setting the stage for the official USDA’s dawn corn report

The official corn and bunion report will show some minor scattered cramping along the left lateral gastrocnemus.   I am pain free but haunted of memories of recent pain, oral and esophageal discomfort so overwhelming and pointless that it must serve some useful, evolutionary purpose. Perhaps HaShem just enjoys watching us tap dance across our darkened floors at 3 AM. Automatons in search for peace. .  What did Joan Didion write about migraine pain?  

…I had no brain tumor, no eyestrain, no high blood pressure, nothing wrong with me at all: I simply had migraine headaches, and migraine headaches were, as everyone who did not have them knew, imaginary. I fought migraine then, ignored the warnings it sent, went to school and later to work in spite of it, sat through lectures in Middle English and presentations to advertisers with involuntary tears running down the right side of my face, threw up in washrooms, stumbled home by instinct, emptied ice trays onto my bed and tried to freeze the pain in my right temple, wished, only for a neurosurgeon who would do a lobotomy on house call, and cursed my imagination

Kindred Spirit Joan.

I am trying to remain perfectly still in the tepid water. The liquid still holds some vague charged animal  energy, Dan and his crew were here a few hours ago, before the spit of the evening turned dawn-ward.

This is what it’s like to die. All options exhausted, no good medications available. No where to turn. I am up to my brain stem in warm water.. Any activity could trigger yet another pain cascade. This is how the end comes, not with a bang but with a whimper.

Last night’s pain reverberates in echoes,  small waves  against the  hot tub’s plastic walls. Last night was brutal. Complex cases . Another salary drop.  Angry patients, demanding patients.  By 8 PM, at shift’s end, my mouth was swollen and sore, a nefarious confrontation of GVHD and  thrush from the  steroids I gargle to keep the  disease at bay. We’ve reached an impasse .

            It’s  cloudy  in West Hartford.  Cloudy and quiet. The pain has subsided but I can’t return to bed, I associate our lovely tempurdedic mattress with pain. What next? Do I move to a Hampton inn where I have no pain associations?

Cyn is calling. It is starting to drizzle and she imagines I will fall asleep and then be flash fried in a lightening strike. It happens.

The point is…  so what? We all suffer in some way. My 95-year olders bring in gnarled useless fingers. Is their suffering less than mine?  What did Anne Lenox sing?

Now every one of us is made to suffer
 every one of us is made to weep
 but we've been hurting one another


And now the pain has cut too deep

So take me from the wreckage
 save me from the blast
 Lift me up and take me back
 don’t let me keep on walking on broken glass

 The mind wanders.  I think of Ray Bradbury on moonless night.   Ray described the central tenant of life:  We are born alone, we life alone we die alone. Pain and longing keeps us separate. I think of his short stories, where the protagonists are separated by space, desire or fear.

His astronaut candidates are   uniquely qualified to explore space because they have no friends, no entanglements.  Michael Creighton   discusses this theory in the Andromeda strain, where he describes the “lone man” hypothesis.   Only astronauts lacking personal connections can be called upon to do the right thing under pressure.  Perhaps only the lonely can tolerate pain, it becomes their constant companion. Am I the lone man?  In Ray’s world, People escape to Mars to flee the stench and crowds of earth.  His message was clear. You will die. You will die alone. Your classmates will lock you in a closet on Venus so you will never ever see the sun.  Your father, the astronaut is already a dead, the actual fact of his death is just one more piece of information that will complete your life.

Pain is numbing, isolating, really, the perfect Bradbury vehicle.  We are all alone in our selfish, intrusive pain.

Our Synagogue had “ projects” when I was young, the idea was to spend time with the congregants less desirable members. We’d buy groceries or read to our fellow congregants. I remember visiting their dark houses with sad wall hangings, sullen gifts given by a least favorite nephew. I remember the shut ins weeping, over loneliness, pain, and isolation. Even as a child, it made an impression on me: Don’t complain. It’s not helpful and makes others pity you.   My pain is transforming me into one of those old, old men who accepted our baked goods with ambiguous thanks, they never seemed happy we had taken some of our day to visit. The drama of the transplant is long gone, now its time to…fit in.

 I am one of those pathetic people.

 What to do about the discomfort?  What to do about the hot poker   that wends its way down my throat?  What I need is a sovereign remedy.

 I think about a cure for Melancholia, a typical  sexist  Bradbury story about a woman affected by the vapors, a woman dying without a diagnosis. 

Send for some leeches; bleed her," said Doctor Gimp. "She has no blood left!" cried Mrs. Wilkes. ""You but tell us as you go out what we told you when you came in!" "No, more! Give her these pills at dawn, high noon, and sunset. A sovereign remedy!"

I had become some  20 year old  hysterical  Victorian woman.

"Where do you hurt?" "My arms. My legs. My bosom. My head. How many doctors - six? - have turned me like a beef on a spit. No more. Please, let me pass away untouched."

My vicious cycle of therapy continues: Steroid mouthwash and oral prednisone, resulting in oral thrush. So I gulp Diflucan an antifungal which sort of works,  Then zantac,.  My pill  bottles  line my bookshelf,  a  yellow landing  strip along the runway of my dresser.

In the Ray Bradbury book, the  elders decide Camellia needs an exposure to moonlight.  I’m way ahead of you all, lying in out hot tub at 5 AM

Y

But let us hoist Camellia, cot and all, maneuver her downstairs, and set her up outside our door." "Camellia?" Mrs. Wilkes turned to her daughter. "I may as well die in the open," said Camilla, "where a cool breeze might stir my locks as I . . ." "Bosh!" said the father. "You'll not die. Jamie, heave! Ha! There! Out of the way, wife! Up, boy, higher!" "Oh," cried Camellia faintly. "I fly, I fly . . . !"

r2

 "She's not well." The man scowled. "She does poorly." "Does poorly-" Mr. Wilkes wrote, then froze. "Sir?" He looked up suspiciously. "Are you a physician?" "I am, sir." "I thought I knew the words! Jamie, take my cane, drive him off! Go, sir, be gone!" But the man hastened off, cursing, mightily exasperated. "She's not well, she does poorly . . . pah!" mimicked Mr. Wilkes, but stopped. For now a woman, tall and gaunt as a specter fresh risen from the tomb, was pointing a finger at Camillia Wilkes. "Vapors," she intoned. "Vapors," wrote Mr. Wilkes, pleased. "Lung-flux," chanted the woman. "Lung-flux!" Mr. Wilkes wrote, beaming. "Now, that's more like it!" 2

" The Dustman's smile flashed like warm sunlight in the growing dusk. "I have but one advice." He gazed at Camillia. She gazed at him. , "It is the night of the Full Moon. So," said the Dustman humbly, unable to take his eyes from the lovely haunted girl, "you must leave your daughter out in the light of that rising moon." "Out under the moon!" said Mrs. Wilkes. "Doesn't that make the lunatic?" asked Jamie. "Beg pardon, sir." The Dustman bowed. "But the full moon soothes all sick animal, be they human or plain field beast.  "It may rain-" said the mother uneasily. "I swear," said the Dustman quickly. "My sister suffered this same swooning paleness. We set her like a potted lily out one spring night with the moon. She lives today in Sussex, the soul of reconstituted health!"

"Mother," said Camillia. "I feel it. The moon will cure me, it will, it will . The last lights out. London asleep. The moon rose. And the higher the moon, the larger grew Camillia's eyes as she watched the alleys, the courts, the streets, until at last, at midnight, the moon moved over her to show her like a marble figure atop an ancient tomb."for it was told me, the moon is my cure." . "Am I then my own affliction? How sick I make myself! Even now, feel my heart!" "I feel it, so." "My limbs, they burn with summer heat!" "Yes. They scorch my fingers." "But now, the night wind, see how I shudder, cold! I die, I swear it, I die!" "I will not let you," he said quietly. "Are you a doctor, then?" "No, just your plain, your ordinary physician, like another who guessed your trouble this day. The girl who would have named it but ran off in the crowd." "Yes, I saw in her eyes she knew what had seized me. But, now, my teeth chatter. And no extra blanket!" 
Somewhere, cats sang. A shoe, shot from a window, tipped them off a fence. Then all was silence and the moon . . .

"Shh . . ." Dawn. Tiptoeing downstairs, Mr. and Mrs. Wilkes peered into their Sweet Camillia, alive and well, made whole again!" They bent by the slumbering girl. "She smiles, she dreams; what's that she says?" "The sovereign," sighed the girl, "remedy." "What, what?" The girl smiled again, a white smile, in her sleep. "A medicine," she murmured, "for melancholy."
My disease bores me, my  pain bores me and I need a carefully  controlled assortment of  medication to  beome whole again.  I debate  raising my prednisonerendoisone dose,  increasing the anti fungals and regulate my  pain medication.  My leukemia  reminds me of Camilla's treatment, sometimes,  sometimes the best therapy  consists of lying in the moon light and waiting for the GVHD gods to  burn themselves out. 

The sun rose over West Hartford, , the pain faded.  Mike and Ellen visited,  The pain ebbs at sunrise  and I spend the day leaning on them, hoping they don’t notice how I need them for support.

I may be coming to the end of my career.  I don't have a lot of choices. I cant  work in pain, can't work sedated.  I have one goal, to shut off the pain.  If I can accomplish  this, then I will have found a sovereign remedy.