Mom & Me Two Archive

...I think I figured out "how long I can hold up". Considering how long I've held up negotiating the vagaries of medicine in a large community where the problem isn't the doctor/patient ratio but the race to make as much profit as possible from processing (badly, without thought and care) as many patients as possible, I think I can hold out until my mother's death-by-U.S.-medicine's-mismanagement or death-by-refusing-to-allow-her-to-be-mismanaged. That's been my standard. No reason to change it now. I understand that the U.S. non-alternative medical establishment believes they've got an ace in the hole by holding desperate-for-care patients hostage. I realized, while setting up the bathroom, that I pulled Mom and myself out of that hole a long time ago with a great deal of success. So, yeah, I think I can hold up and, further, I think my mother will be no worse for me taking the position, here in this community of rural medical mismanagement, that I've kept my mother alive and fairly well undamanged in the Valley by refusing or modifying questionable treatment. I'll bet I can keep my mother alive at least as long, and probably longer, by facing off with a rural medical community that thinks it's got its patients in an untenable bind.
    Rally the troops, we'll meet the bastards with all we've got.
    I'm thinking, immediately, of McNamara's advice to "empathize with the enemy" (from The Fog of War. I can see I'm not yet doing this. I'll work on it this weekend. I think, in order to clearly see that with which I need to empathize I have needed to mobilize my anger. It's mobilized. Now, I think I can afford to do a little enemy dance, see what it's like, then we're on our way. Not that I think my approach will be much different than previously but maybe I need to tailor it with some detail attractive to the enemy.
    I'll work on this.
    Time, over time, I guess, to tantalize my mother out of her reverie. Ahh, reconnaisance coughing. Yes, it's time.