I wrote 25 progress notes Thursday evening and another 25 yesterday evening clearing out my backlog. This means for the first time in recent history, I don’t have a whole bunch of work related paperwork hanging over my head on Saturday and Sunday. I am therefore taking the time that would usually be occupied by my propped up on my bed with my laptop wrestling with the electronic medical record with reruns of some police procedural on the TV to keep me company and using it instead to write this, my latest missive contemplating the weighty issues of the day – like whether or not I feel like a trip to the Piggly Wiggly on Clairmont for the few perishable groceries I stock.
Electronic health records are just one of many reasons why I plan to retire in roughly 18 months. They are cumbersome, filled with data points imported from elsewhere in the system that have no bearing on what you’re trying to convey, and in general take about twice as long to complete as our old system of dictation and transcription. I have a side gig as a reviewer of medical records for attorneys. It pays well (and these days I give what I make to the local theatre community). I’ve been doing it for more than thirty years now. I enjoy the detective work piece of it, sifting through mounds of data to try and piece together the story of what happened and seeing if you can support the arguments of the attorneys with fact or not. I guess I’m rather good at it. At least I keep being asked to do it. I haven’t decided if this piece of the career ends when I step down from active faculty or not.
When I first started doing this sort of work, back in the dim recesses of the ancient past called the early 1990s, I used to get these large bankers boxes delivered by UPS with thousands of pages of photocopies. Now I get a thumb drive or a Drop Box link. I learned a few things quickly. Don’t try to read anything that’s handwritten – the important stuff is dictated and typed. Construct a timeline that serves as the backbone of the narrative. Don’t write anything down you don’t want discovered. Civil law, which covers the sort of torts I’m involved with, pretty much boils down to plaintiff and defense each spinning a seperate story out of the available facts and hoping that their story is the one that will prevail. Fortunately, the majority of cases I am involved with never go to trial. Attorneys much prefer to work things out in settlement talks where thre is a modicum of control. One never knows what a jury may do.
I suppose that goes for all groups of people and not just juries. We’re certainly seeing evidence of that left, right and sideways throughout what is left of our civil society. If I haven’t misconstrued things, current headlines include disastrous conditions and multiple legal and human rights violations at the various jury rigged (see what I did there?) facilities where they are holding detainees swept up mainly for their ease of capture, and not their danger to society. The president, on the eve of an incredibly dangerous cut off of SNAP benefits, is hosting a Great Gatsby themed Halloween party and tweeting about how much marble he put into a refurbished White House bathroom. Hasn’t anyone in the MAGA movement read any history? Revolutions happen when enough mothers have difficulty feeding their children. And it doesn’t take much. The accepted figure is that if 3.5% of the citizenry become mobilized, change is inevitable. SNAP covers 12.3% of the citizenry.
The Speaker of the House has indicated he is unlikely to call the House back into session until after the holidays, effectively removing the legislative branch and its oversight functions from our constitutional checks and balances. The air traffic control system is in melt down and there have been a number of near misses. DHS is building a more efficient version of Staasi based on biometric monitoring. The vice president appears to be throwing his wife and children under the bus in order to shore up his Christofascist credentials. (I hope Usha takes Ivana Trump’s motto from ‘The First WIves Club’ to heart – ‘Don’t get mad, get everything’.) Fox news has been welcoming literal Nazis as honored guests. At least RFK Jr. has been somewhat quiet this week and is trying to walk back his idiotic comments regarding Tylenol and autism. I guess he realized that he might have some difficulties with the discovery process in the suits he filed.
The great unravelling continues and who knows where it will all end up. The problem is that it’s being egged on by a number of different constituencies, each with a very different plan for the rebuild on the other side. Theocrats, tech bros, conservative politicians, and hedge fund billionaires don’t speak the same language or have the same frames of reference. I have a feeling the battles between those factions trying to control where society heads are going to be far more viscious than anything we’ve seen to date. I’m just going to continue to live by my mantra. Get up. Get dressed. Go out. Do good. There will be plenty of opportunity for that.
The theatrical career is moving forward. I’ve had my first few rehearsals for ‘Soul Food: Another Serving’ which performs the week before Thanksgiving. It’s fun and I’ve got a couple of realy good scenes. I haven’t quite found my character yet but that will come. I’m spending some time tomorrow pounding lines. My least favorite part of the creative process. I go from that into ‘Miracle on 34th Street’, then am off Christmas week before beginning rehearsal for South Pacific. I’ll see everyone in mid January when that closes. Mid January through late March are currently available on my performance calendar should anyone need me for something. It looks like I’ve been talked into another year of Summer Shakespeare with Bell Tower Players so I guess I know what I’m doing from late June through mid August as well. My choice is The Tempest. Hopefully a little less political than Richard II.
Somewhere in all of this, I have agreed to give a talk to the UAB LGBTQ employees group. They’ve asked me to recount my life as an out gay man in academic medicine over the last four decades. I came out during my Intern year. I wasn’t out in medical school – perhaps I’ll go into some of the reasons why. Several people have said that the material in my books should be adapted into a theatrical monologue. Perhaps this is a chance to give that a trial run. One more thing to write. I feel a nap coming on. Going to end this one here.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 