“Are you ok?”

This is the great rhetorical dental question of our time. I love it.

No offense to any women dentists out there, but this is the point in the post where I pretend to be something I’m not, and slip into the vernacular of the “real man.”

I love it because I think it takes some real stones to ask it. Sure, you’re lying prone with sharp – and often powered equipment in your mouth – but they don’t know you from the criminally insane. That question, under the wrong circumstances, could be a real problem.

Alas, I am not criminally insane, though I am reminded of something Salvador Dali said: “The only difference between a madman and myself is I AM NOT MAD!”

Back to my dental encounter…

“Oh yeah. The veins in my neck bulge out like this all the time. My lips and jaw quiver like they have a life of their own sometimes. I have no idea why.”

Of course, that’s not what came out of my mouth. I was counting on it. I’m non-confrontational by nature. Instead, a series of grunts and seemingly random noises on the low end of the register came out of my mouth (along with a slurry of drool, chemical run-off, and blood). Folks in the biz call it “chair-speak.”

Although I wonder, have dentists and their minions (aka hygenists) evolved the ability to understand chair-speak? Is it like the way parents learn to understand their children’s early attempts at communication, long before others can? Or is it a more innate ability of the species – like a mother’s ability to interpret a baby’s cry and instantly know what’s wrong.

Either way, I was obviously not relaxed, and I owed it to the latest quiver in my dentist’s arsenal.

I don’t know what it’s called. I think of it as “Satan’s Pickax.” Think of a combination tool of discomfort, a Swiss Army Knife of dental torture if you will: a razor-sharp pick, high-pressure washer, and a carpenter’s router. Plus, it also comes with mood music… it wails like a banshee who stole your coach’s wistle from high school phys-ed.

Good stuff.

To their credit, they did try swathing my gums with a numbing gel. To their discredit, they used a little extra elbow grease. It reminded me of folks who eat food with “half the calories,” but eat four times as much of the stuff.

Step right up folks! We’re offering one half the sensitivity while achieving two times the pain!

Otherwise, it was a routine visit. I don’t need major surgery. In fact I was congratulated on my superior brushing technique – which almost masks the fact I don’t floss enough.

I’m a big fan of the backhanded compliment, so I can appretiate it when someone works at their craft.

Now, as some poor shmuck with little more than a family and a mailbox, this sounds like something perfectly resonable to say… if it was born of my lips. As my insurance company – whose sole purpose in the universe is to disburse healthcare dollars for – drum roll please – healthcare, this sounded fishy.

Hold onto your skull caps frends, I’m not done yet. You see, I wasn’t exactly speaking to my health insurance company. I was speaking to the company with a subcontract for the work with a certain medical specialty. No, this wasn’t an error on my part – we were both on the same medical specialty page. The problem was, the subcontractor didn’t handle claims/billing/money.

If I had it to do all over, I would have asked a few probing questions – with a pinch of sarcasm for flavor.

So what do you do when you get a bill? Do you forward it to the correct recipient? Do you notify the Doctor’s office about the error? Do you do both? Do you just ignore it, hoping it will go away? If you don’t process claims, what the hell do you do? What value do you add to my healthcare?

Alas, I felt cowed, and for no good reason. Maybe it was a case of learned helplessness. Either way, I just said thanks and called my Doctor’s office to let them know what I learned. Of course, I had to leave a message with their billing department. They were on the phone assisting other patients.

They were assisting with other insurance problems, no doubt.

I might want to call them? Does this imply I might not want to call them… that I might just want to pay the bill myself and not go through the hassle? Or is it possible they might want me to just pay the bill, so they won’t have to go through the hassle?

If you guessed all of the above, you win… a warm feeling in your heart, knowing you’re at least as smart as me. Well, maybe not warm, exactly. Room temperature?

I’m not sure what this says more about: my doctor’s office or my insurance company. Is health insurance so poorly run in this country that it’s routine to wait six months for payment? Or is the office manager at my doctor’s office REALLY lax with the ‘ole follow-up?

If this is business as usual, would it really hurt anyone if it was run more like a government?

“Do you have your picture Adam?” my mother-in-law asked as we were leaving. “Yes Memere,” (that French-Canadian thing again) Adam replied.

Later, as we were backing down the driveway, Adam asked, “why does Memere want me to have this picture so much?”

Now keep in mind I’m sort of a lapsed Lutheran, but I try really hard to be respectful. Since l wandered off into the wilderness from church, Cheryl has been taking the kids with her and her parents to Mass.

“Well, maybe it’s because she wants you to be a good Catholic” I replied.

“But I don’t want to be a Catholic, I want to be a veterinarian.”

You gotta love my little guy.

But there’s a dark side to their mission: addiction and control. You see, they may seem like ordinary cookies, but the truth is they’re much more. These “Girl Scouts” cast their cookies like a fishing line, waiting patiently for a hook to set. Like nicotine, heroin, or crack, the unsuspecting public are quickly helpless against the cookies, which overwhelm the senses with the first bite. From then on they’re like a column of Pringles… you can’t just eat one. Without thinking, boxes disappear almost without notice… all due to the thrall of the cookie. People find themselves wandering to the closest grocery store, looking for a dealer waiting just outside the automatic doors. There, they find tables well stocked with several varieties, but all with the same intent: to fatten the American calf.

We all know what happens to the fatted calf, don’t we?

Friends, I’m here today to warn you against this growing threat. I too have been a victim. The other night I fell to the Samoas’ spell. What started as an innocent bite turned into a late night binge on cocunut caramel evil.

Don’t be like me. Resist! Pass the word. Please, for the love of Richard Simmons, don’t take that first bite.

The Aluminum Apple Pro Keyboard

If you’ve been with me for a few years and you’ve got a keen mind (allowing you to remember the most pedestrian of posts from a mediocre blogger) you may recall this post – post chemotherapy. Well since then Apple has gone all bluetooth, all the time… but the look, and more importantly – the feel – has remained the same. I picked up one of the bluetooth beauties to use my MacBook as an occasional “Media PC” in our family room.

Well, a funny thing happened on the path of querty snobbery. Now I can’t stand typing on anything but the laptop like keyboards. Everything else feels mushy – like my fingers are pushing on keys made soft, sugary beach sand. Take my Dell keyboard at work… please! By contrast, my fingers feel like they take flight on my keyboards at home. My MacBook is a delight. The iMac keyboard (even with the 7 key pried off/broken by a fidgety kid who will remain anonymous – though the name rhymes with death) is crisp. The keys activate with little more than intention. Thoughts become words effortlessly. I love it.

So I did something I’m not really supposed to do. I connected a personally owned peripheral to a state owned machine. Then the heavens opened and the wrath of God befell my suddenly penitent soul.

Well, not exactly.

By the way, I just love the warnings you get working with Windows… like: “Hey but-head! Are you sure you want to use that USB 1.x hub? Your devices would work a lot faster on a USB 2.x port. I know you wouldn’t know a USB port from your a–, so would you like me to hold your hand and show you where your superior ports are?”

All right. You got me. That’s not a direct quote. This isn’t journalism class. However, I think I’ve captured the attitude written/read between the lines.

In these cases I like to talk back to my computer. Yes, I know it’s not listening. Fortunately my coworkers and family are. I have quite the reputation to uphold, you know. In this case I replied, “You arrogant piece of plastic garbage, I know damn well what I’m doing. I’m just plugging in my keyboard (Apple’s keyboards often don’t live far from the small footprint of their CPU companions). Just how fracking fast would I have to type to take advantage of that extra bandwidth from USB 2.x? It may feel like my fingers are flying, but no one is that fast, so leave me alone. I know what I’m doing, damn it!”

Whenever I swear at one of my Macs I feel bad. There are no regrets when it comes to the dark knight of personal computing. Its got it coming.

My sister called on Thursday to warn us about the epidemic of colds working its way through the house. The implied message: “John comes at his own risk.”

But when have I ever given in to good sense?

We hit the parks with my standard equipment: a big floppy hat, sunglasses, my Nikon, and my afternoon meds. The day started with a textbook example of gluttony. It was an all you can stuff in your gut “character breakfast” at the Contemporary Resort known as “Chef Mickey.” I paid for every bite the rest of the morning.

We skipped lunch, the cement in our stomachs formerly known as “breakfast” still in place.

It wasn’t until a snack, an hour or two before dinner time – a frozen banana – that I got my groove back. After that we had a great time. We stayed through the evening to watch the fireworks, something we hadn’t done in several years.

The kids had a great time though, throughout the day. The character breakfast, our second in as many months, didn’t lose any of it’s magic. Even Beth, 12 going on 25, enjoyed hangin’ with the Mouse and his crew. From there we ventured over to the Animal Kingdom.

I still can’t get over the center piece of the park: the man-made “Tree of Life.” How quintessentially Disney?

We hit a few of the attractions we missed the last time through. One turned out to be the best damn bird show I’ve ever seen. As it happens, this was only the second bird show I’ve ever seen, but still….

Then there was the “broadway style show about life in the Jungle.” I speak, of course, of the Lion King show. I expected it to be the single most corny thing I’d seen in my life. Maybe the low expectations colored my view, but it was actually pretty good. For a theme park show… heck, for any show, the singing was excellent.

Today I was back at it in the office, looking over orders and sniffing out solutions to problems. I was tired and my head hurt.

And you know what?

It was worth it.

I learned the story of my great uncle Franklin doing genealogy research. Recently I traded emails with my grandfather’s (and Franklin’s) half sister, who told me some things about Franklin I hadn’t known. I’d been interested in the kind of person Franklin was for some time, as well his mother – my great-grandmother. You see, all I knew of my great-grandmother was she ran off with the kids (my grandfather and his brother Franklin) to Miami, leaving her husband and the rest of her family behind in Vermont. She was a disgrace to the family. All I knew of Franklin was he died by suicide, and in the few pictures I had he seemed sad… almost haunted. From this I assumed they were part of a long history of mental illness in my family, plaguing my mother, me, and possibly my daughter. I’ve thought about this for some time.

Recently, as I’ve dealt with my own depression, I’ve come to resent them. A part of me came to blame them. I know I wouldn’t be around if not for them, and there’s much I have to be grateful for, but rationality and depression don’t always go together.

Through my great-aunt I learned of Franklin’s outgoing, generous nature. I learned he was an educated man. He went to school at the University of Florida – my alma mater. There were elements of his personality I recognized in myself, and some things I aspire to.

I also learned he was a gay man during the 1950’s. He was a gay man all of his life, but I note the 1950’s on purpose. Right or wrong, I think of this time as one of the more repressed, socially conservative eras in US history. When I think of this time I think of the simmering tensions leading to the civil rights era. I think of repressive gender roles. I think of McCarthyism.

These revelations about Franklin’s life have me re-evaluating my feelings about my mother’s family. Maybe Franklin was mentally ill, I don’t know. Maybe it exacerbated a troubled soul. However, maybe he’d lost his job, his home and found himself at the end of his rope because he was an openly gay man in the wrong place – and most assuredly the wrong time.

There is no more animus in my heart for Franklin or my great-grandmother. Instead there’s guilt, sorrow and anger.

I feel guilt for laying any blame on either of them for my own problems. I know so little about my great-grandmother’s life, I have no right to judge her actions. I feel sorrow for the pain Franklin must have felt, being singled out for mistreatment just for being who he was. And I feel anger. I feel anger for the way we still find differences rather than common humanity between ourselves, and use it as an excuse to hurt.

Where ever you may be Franklin, I’m so sorry.

I got this news after my little nap in her lobby yesterday. Cheryl was pissed we didn’t find out sooner. “Why didn’t they at least call?!?” But it wouldn’t have changed anything, other than give me another six months to think about it. Personally, I’m glad they didn’t call. I’m thinking about it enough now to make up for lost time.

Please don’t let me mislead you. My life is not on the line. The form of Leukemia I have may be one of the rarest, but it’s also relatively easy to treat, and a high percentage of patients see remission after only one course of chemotherapy. It’s also like the turtle of all cancers. Early detection is not important. Plus, I knew it would probably come back. I just thought it would be fifteen years, not less than five.

I’m not afraid. I’ve done this before and I know, somewhere in this thick scull of mine, that everything will be ok. And yet, I feel a lot like I did almost three years ago. I’m depressed. I’m distracted. I thought I could make it through a day at work today, but I’m fragile. I didn’t make it to ten o’clock. I’m dreading the chemotherapy. If my last reaction is any indication, it will involve a couple weeks in the hospital with pain, puke, fever, chills, and a few things best left unsaid on a family web site.

Oh the hell with it. At times it kind of felt like a roto-rooter of my lower GI, someone fiddling with the insides of my bones, and a bad concussion.

I wait. Cheryl will worry over every sign of illness, discomfort, or fatigue. People will offer their prayers and I’ll feel unworthy. People will say they’re sorry and my mind will snap back “why, you didn’t do anything.” Luckily, the filter between my mind and my mouth will be in working order.

Most of the time.

Resigned, I’ll just brood a lot, which won’t be much different than normal.

I’m great at parties too.

Buying shoes isn’t something I enter into lightly. It’s a ten (or more) year commitment. I walk past shoes in the store on display, looking for the perfect shoe. I’ve never found them. It’s like trying to shop for a new best friend. How can you possibly tell how you’ll get along in a month or a year, after hanging out in the mall for a few minutes?

Well, this year someone made the choice for me. I got a pair for Christmas and I feel like I’m in an arranged marriage.

They seem ok: a decent, serviceable pair of shoes. We’re still in the “getting to know each other” phase, each of us doing a little give and take. The shoes are giving shape, slowly molding themselves to my foot. I’m giving a few layers of skin.

I’m tempted to go back to my old pair, no matter how old they look, but I think that will only prolong the pain.

No, a clean break is probably better.