You know how much i write about the health clinic here and how everything is so easy around here. well, now i will let you in on a little secret. i also have another, secret, doctor. A few years ago our health clinic physician gathered her patients together and announced she was leaving the organization – in part because she wanted to devote herself more to the study of macrobes and stuff and in part because the health clinic was making serious restrictions on the time she was allowed to devote to an individual patient. She would instead take on private clients on an annual basis in an effort to keep them well. Ezi and I agreed that she had saved Ezi and me numerous times with keen diagnoses and careful selection of medications and we would subscribe. This arrangement keeps me comfortable. I know the national health doctors are overburdened with patients and the waiting room is always crowded, even though the doctor allots the required maximum of 10 minutes to each person, and i can go to the doctor in the system knowing what i need and how the problem can be solved. Because I’m about to publish a paper on the doctor who initiated antiseptic, Lord Joseph Lister, and the poet William Ernest Henley, I’m very interested in how diagnoses and treatment are achieved. Of course it’s the other way around: because the first doctor i can remember was such a thorough diagnostician, and my whole life has been devoted to looking at details in the context of the whole, I really admire doctors who think.

So today Ezi and I spent 3 hours with her reviewing his blood tests and his treatments and his physical and mental condition, at the present time and in relation to all the treatments he has received in the past 15 years and coming to conclusions about what to do, what to eat, how to take care, when to take what medicines and with what, etc. etc. i was really in awe of the process, of how every detail, every chart, every spot on his body, was included in the consideration.