What is the one word you don’t want to hear when visiting a medical professional?

A few weeks ago, I visited my cardiologist.  He walked into the examination room reading a sheaf of medical records supplied by my internist.

“Your blood tests from Monday were fine,” he began as Daveen and I smiled, “but your blood tests from last week are alarming.”

I looked at him.

“I didn’t have any blood tests last week,” I said.

“Oh.”  He rustled through the papers.

“Oops.  Those were for another patient.”

I have read that many medical patients, especially in a hospital, suffer unnecessarily due to human error. As terrible as that is, it makes sense. We humans are not designed to be perfect, and mistakes – our own and others – are always possible. This is why, when my children began to drive, I told them that if they failed to pay attention, even for 5 seconds, they could be killed in an auto accident – and that it might not even be their fault.  My friend’s son was driving home from work when he was tragically killed by a drunk driver speeding through a red light at 2:30 in the morning.

I am not a doctor, but I have the greatest respect for those who are.  When my parents tried to convince me to study medicine, my answer – repeatedly – was an emphatic “No,” because I faint at the sight of blood.  I hope that I eventually satisfied them by  becoming both a CPA and an attorney.  And, my eldest son became a doctor, and he has been extremely helpful to our entire family.  He also married a doctor, who has been equally helpful.

What I learned from my recent cardiologist visit is that it’s important to not only check my own work for mistakes, but also the work of others.  This won’t eliminate every mistake, but it does catch many and that is certainly a plus, especially when my life might depend on it.

I’m sure that if I looked over my blogs of the past ten years, I would find a typo or two, even after extensive proofreading by me and others.

To err is human, to forgive . . . well, that could be the subject of another blog.

Alan

I’m sitting in a lounge chair on the top deck of the Disney Wonder cruise ship. I will refrain from commenting on the name of the ship, which is presently docked at Ketchikan, Alaska.

The snow topped mountains and densely forested slopes stand in stark contrast to the lingering images in my mind from an outstanding book I’ve just finished — Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham. It is one of the best books I’ve read recently, a compelling account of the nuclear disaster at a nuclear power plant in Russia in 1986 when it was still the USSR.

As a soft wind blows into my face, I find myself wondering if it contains radioactive particles from one of the peacetime nuclear “accidents”, including Chernobyl, that humans are responsible for causing. This triggers in me a fear I’ve lived with practically my entire life. It also raises a question central to that fear: can human beings be trusted with nuclear power?

In 1947, when I was seven years old, I worried almost every day that the Russians would detonate an atomic bomb above Los Angeles, creating a human disaster larger than those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed.

I wonder if Micky Mouse, patron saint of the world of Disney (and a little older than me) has ever shared my concerns.

Robert Frost wondered if the world would end in fire, or ice.

As I sit here on vacation, reading and contemplating nuclear disaster, I think that I should probably go join the rest of my party for some good-old, light-hearted fun. But instead, I find myself indulging my natural inclination to think about problems and try to solve them.

On this week-long trip I’ve also nearly completed reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Am I lucky, or just a glutton for punishment?

At any rate, I’ll end this blog simply by sharing the poetic thoughts of Frost writing about Fire and Ice.

“Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.”

Hopefully I’ll feel more cheerful next week and won’t succumb to reading Grimms Fairy Tales).

Alan

My father turned 18 in 1932 during the heart of the Great Depression. I learned from him at an early age that money was both scarce and important.

Even when I was only twelve years old and my weekly allowance was sixty cents, I always saved some of it, and was very careful in spending the rest. I was so frugal, in fact, when I was 23 a friend asked me why I didn’t occasionally splurge on some unnecessary indulgence.

“It’s not the $20.00,” I said, “but the $1.50 a year I would lose in interest for the rest of my life.”  He probably thought I was nuts.

But as careful as I was, I still occasionally lost money, usually because I was taken advantage of, but also because I sometimes bought items that I later regretted. It goes without saying that I was upset about money much of the time. (Like whenever I was awake.)

I finally decided that the stress wasn’t worth it, so I gave myself a “budget” of $10,000 a year with which to indulge in things I didn’t need or to lose to someone who wasn’t honest.

This probably didn’t save much, if any, money, but it did buy me peace of mind. From that day to this I have not kept track. I think I remained within my budget, but more importantly, I know I have felt a lot better about my life without worrying about how I spend every dime.

So if something you’re doing in your life bothers you on more than an occasional basis, I recommend that you develop your own personal strategy to deal with it, as I did with spending money.

As far as I know, the purpose of life is to enjoy it, and not to make your children wealthy.  (Note:  many of them may read this. And comment.)

At the moment I’m seated for lunch on a cruise ship. Paid for (drum roll please) from my savings.

Sorry, kids.

Alan