November 11, 2023

I am writing this in my usual position, propped up in bed with my laptop balanced on my lap. I hadn’t been able to do that for a few weeks as the tip of the power cord had broken off inside the socket and gotten firmly stuck there. It has now been repaired and my trusty laptop, on which I have written pretty much all of these musings, is back in service. It is now five and a half years old, about as long as a laptop lasts. I shall replace it next year sometime when I have a little extra money lying about. I need something with a bit more memory as more and more of the ephemera of my life becomes digitized and needs somewhere to repose until such time as I can sort it all. I keep threatening to do that but other things keep getting in the way.

Thursday marked the 25th anniversary of my first day of work at UAB. A quarter century. Coming up on a third of a century in geriatrics as a whole. (That date will be just a little less than a year from now 10/31/24 to be exact – which will be the 26th anniversary of the day Steve and I arrived in Birmingham to begin a new life). I always assumed my career in medicine would span about 40 years – that anniversary is either August of 2024 if we use the day I began medical school or June of 2028 if we use either the day I graduated from medical school or the day I began my residency. No matter how you slice and dice it, I’m looking towards the end game after a life time of saving the world, one patient at a time. Do I end with a bang or with a whimper? Do I continue to tilt at the windmills until, like Don Quixote, I drop in harness? Do I just get up from my desk one day, square my shoulders and walk off into a glorious technicolor sunset while the music swells in the background? I haven’t figured that part out.

I am keeping my head above water at work. It isn’t easy. On the UAB side, my nurse practitioner has departed and it will be some months before we can find and hire another one and I’ll have to cover more than usual in order to keep everything going the way that it should. On the VA side, the leader of our department for the last seven or so years is moving up the ladder and we are uncertain how that will shake itself out. The administration at the VA has been known to make some very odd decisions when it comes to organizing senior leadership and we’re all crossing our fingers that someone who knows nothing of the eldercare world is not installed at the top. My current plan is not to change anything appreciably in 2024 presuming life doesn’t throw me a curveball. Knowing my past history, that may be too much to ask for.

I had first read through on my next show today. It’s a scabrous holiday dark comedy by the same author who wrote the Reindeer Monologues. This one is called ‘Seven Santas’ and it has, for the first half, the same monologue format with different aspects of Santa filling the audience in on the more sordid details of the goings on at the North Pole and then, in the second half, there’s a significant battle of the wills between the various aspects of Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the whole thing becomes a demented twelve step meeting. It’s the sort of entertainment you need after one too many Hallmark Holiday movies with Lacey Chabert. It should be fun. There’s a couple of people in it with whom I have worked before but most of the cast is new to me and I always enjoy getting to know new folk in the theater community.

I’ve had a head cold the last couple of days (home Covid test negative) so I’ve been taking it easy this weekend and not doing a whole lot. I’ve been working on some PR for the book. (It’s available Wednesday but you can preorder on Amazon now if you so choose). There should be a couple of local signings and readings over the next few months. If you have contacts in easy to reach places like Atlanta or Nashville or Chattanooga or New Orleans or Memphis that would like a reading or signing, send them my way. Further afield and I’m happy to do it by zoom unless someone is willing to pick up the travel tab. Several people have suggested that I should concentrate on travel writing for my next project. If you can find someone who will fund the travel, I’ll be more than happy to send a daily stream of travel columns back to the source. I wonder if Conde Nast has an opening.

I am here through Christmas other than a very brief trip for Thanksgiving. Give me strength and memory capacity to learn my lines for this show. At least the next one is going to be easy…