February 1, 2004

• RELEASE

  
  

  One of the most valuable gems I’ve picked up among the garbage in the quite-valuable-yet-quite-flawed 12-step programs is the injunction to let go of resentments.  In AA, the original 12-step program, it is written that resentment is the “dubious luxury that normal men can afford” but we addicts cannot.

  
  

  The gravest  impediment to my quest to let go of my resentments has shown itself to be my “righteous indignation”.  I don’t harbor unjust resentment.  If I hold animosity for anyone, it is because they have done me harm–not just insult or disrespect, but real harm.  It was not always thus.  The ‘sixties saw me going along with my peers in resenting the military industrial complex and hating the police.  In my youth I resented my parents and teachers and anyone else (even God) who imposed restrictions on me.  I have matured out of a lot of those foolish resentments, but I have had a devilishly hard time in letting go, for my own growth, recovery and peace of mind, of my “justified” resentments.

  
  

  It has not been at all difficult to release my resentment toward police.  In general, the cops and criminals tend to have more affection and respect for each other, through familiarity, than either group gets from normal law-abiding citizens.  Some of the kindest people I have known were cops.  Tim, the former sheriff’s deputy I dated forty years ago, adopted K-9 rejects, German shepherds judged too vicious for police work.  Those dogs, as well as the ocelot and the St.Bernard that rode around with him in his little sports car, loved him.  Animals, I’ve found, are good judges of character.

  
  

  In the years since I’ve matured, settled down and toned down my life of crime, I’ve had contact with a number of honorable, admirable and helpful Alaska State Troopers.  One of them, just a little guy, intervened and took down a large and dangerously drugged-up armed man, keeping him from robbing, and possibly from injuring or killing Greyfox at his roadside stand.  Others have joined in wilderness searches for people I love, and they routinely do humanitarian tasks around here such as delivering emergency messages to people who live off the grid.  Cops, on the whole, are okay by me.

  
  

  There is another group, however, against whom I have long harbored general resentments.  Even though I have known many doctors and nurses who were decent people, and even once worked toward my own career in nursing, I have hated, feared and resented the medical profession… for good reason.  Entrenched medical dogma prevents the adoption and acceptance of both new and ancient “alternative” therapies.  The conspiracy between the silverbacked physicians’ entrenched power elite, pharmaceutical cartels, hospital administrators and insurance industry bean counters puts medical care out of the economic reach of many people whose quality of life and very survival are imperiled by that fact.  Those are just some of my general, impersonal, cultural and political complaints against the institution of Medicine.

  
  

  I have personal gripes, too.  For my entire life, on balance, I think doctors have done me more harm than good.  For all I know it was good hospital care and quick neonatal surgery that ensured my survival from a lengthy and traumatic birth.  I know that it was ACTH, a new drug at the time, that saved my mother’s life a few years later.  But the series of misdiagnoses, malpractice and mistaken treatments I’ve received have taken away any gratitude I might have, as well as much of the strength and vitality I might also have now if not for them.  The list is long, and anyone curious enough to look can find a lot of it in my memoirs.  A few highlights include my parents’ being told I “would not live to grow up,” and my being given (in the ‘fifties when such things were done) radiation treatments for a wart that earlier would have been surgically excised and now would be removed by laser.

  
  

  There was the young Air Force MD medical officer who gave me a “hot” allergy desensitization shot and killed me–and on the other side to balance that one, the old master sergeant combat medic who brought me back with a shot of adrenaline.  Another case of iatrogenic illness that did immeasurable harm but also had a positive result was the irresponsible internist who gave me four prescriptions for the various symptoms of my hypoglycemia and made me so ill that I quit going to doctors for the next twenty-some years.  Now when I drop into the clinic, it is with my diagnosis firmly in mind and a handful of supporting documentation to give to the PAs there.  I leave nothing to chance or to their skills, which are to me an unknown quantity.  I question and investigate every opinion they give me and each prescription, before I accept them.  I argue and they (some of them) hate that.  Those are the ones I avoid the next time I make an appointment.

  
  

  Anyhow, for me for many years the AMA has been a dirty acronym on the same scale as the GOP.  In my view, reactionary, backward-thinking “conservatism” in both organizations has not only been impeding progress but has been causing great loss and destruction on this planet.  Nothing has happened to change my mind about that, but now I find I can forgive them.  It is not for them that I do it.  It is not a reasoned act.  It is an unabashedly selfish and emotional choice I’ve made, to simply forgive.

  
  

  One thing did contribute to that decision, besides that oft-repeated injunction in the programs, that bit about releasing those “dubious luxuries.”  That thing is a book that Greyfox brought home, a discard from the public library.  I started leafing through it when I found it lying on the floor.  The first little essay I read brought tears to my eyes.  By the second one, I had found the release I’ve been fumbling towards for months.  Feels good, doc.  Thanks.

  • 6:34 pm
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