Another Pleasant Starbuck’s Thursday. Wasn’t that a song?

Spent part of Thursday morning at Starbuck’s with Lew P. While he is ok company, he acts like he knows me from the inside out. I met him a short while ago, not more than two years. It’s not like he created me, is it? Some guys, huh?

DOE’s, Doctors of Everything, they know it all, you have to foul them up to keep them on their toes. Slip them a tidbit of information that they don’t know, and make them think. Like Biden’s brain surgery. He had an aneurysm. People forget that fact, and it explains a lot about the Vice-President. He’s brain damaged, for real. 

His neurosurgery must have been computer-guided to be performed in such a confined and miniscule space. Biden’s brainpan, he’s a size three hat. Know what I mean.

Another American medical innovation, the surgeon used an electron microscope for neurosurgery, an advance way beyond stereotactic surgery.  

I guess you can tell Dr. Muttnick plays for the elephants, a Republican. Back when I was in private orthopedic practice I worked for peanuts; that’s why most physicians are Republicans. No that is not an Urban Legend, it’s a fact jack.      

Or maybe you just let the DOE’s know, you know who they really are. With Lew P it is easy. I asked him if he had been published yet. He hadn’t so what kind of writer can he be? He says an unpublished novelist.

Tink requested that I be diplomatic. He’s an unpublished scribbler, linking events without a theme. He is to writing what Jackson Pollack was to art. Hemingway is Rembrandt, and Lew P. is Pollack. He swears it is different in his novels compared to this blog. From my experience as a character in both settings, it is.

In the novels, I know my dramatic purpose, and so does he, but you never see the author getting shot or having a stroke in the novels. I guess, they reserve that fate for after the novel is published, and the author gets his first royalty check.  

Self inflicted wound, or cardiac arrest?      

A few lesser lights at the hospital have been published, although in fairness, it was in second-rate medical journals, like The Journal of Irreproducible Facts. They hadn’t published fiction, at least they won’t admit to publishing fiction, medical or otherwise. They call it research. I call it bull droppings, with a dose of imagination.

A self-style savant, Dr. Mack. U. Seow, has written several books on surgical history and also business acumen, but he is gone now. One of his patients popped a question that punctured his ego and he blew up like a balloon. He was never seen on the Jersey shore again. Rumor has it that he moved to New York City where he can re-inflate (read re-invent) himself.  

I was in Nam. A whole bunch of writers came out of there. I like the hardboiled works of Michael Connelly, and Robert B. Parker. They write about guys, men who have been there, not physicians who forgot how to shoot straight.

Arthur’s taking me to Sea Girt to practice with the Colt, but until then I’m part of the physicians who can’t shoot straight. I did once, but not now, and it’s a shame. There is nothing to compare with the joy of squeezing off four or five rounds into a target. To remain PC we’re talking bull’s eye targets, not animate, although if the creature from the wild rose bramble would show itself ….     

I practiced orthopedics for eighteen years before Lew P even found me. Still, he’s an all right guy, if you go for that kind. Let’s you know whether he likes you or not right out, straightforward.

Still can’t call him a man’s man. Doubt he ever shot a gun, even an air gun. He thinks BB’s are the row after AA. He thinks AA is the row after Z. He’s afraid of a straw and wadded paper spitball, and he doesn’t drink much Murphy’s either. So he doesn’t know his BB from his AA.  

Hemingway would chew him up and make Grappa out of him. Or maybe use that damn shotgun on him. Oops there goes my PC right down the tubes.

His sentences are so long, Papa would probably shoot him just for that. Lew P’s two daughters are prettier than anything Earnest produced, as a first or second-generation sire. Smarter too. So we cut Lew P a minor break.   

Instead of Murphy’s Stout, I think Lew P. is a wine drinker. Is it wino or whiner? Or is he two wines in one? Like that mint advertisement several years ago. Certs, no he is more ticky-tacky than a cert-ive.    

How can wine be a smart drink, it doesn’t have a head. Instead of a head it has a bouquet. No man wants to trade his head for a bouquet, like some debutante.

I know some people who have nothing in their heads. An empty head is better than no head, although, anencephaly, being born without a brain, is immediately fatal, at least in the medical books. Some of the Hollywood celebrities, lately, demonstrated that the textbooks are wrong. The things they do, they couldn’t have functioning brains.

Pour that Murphy’s down the side and it is smarter than most of Hollywood, with a head that stands up for itself. Didn’t Mel Gibson claim that it wasn’t his fault and his head just stood up by itself. He had no control over it on that beach in Costa Rica. It’ll cost him more than a few Rica’s by the time he’s through. Couldn’t happen to a more worthy subject.     

Lew P mentioned that his nephew won an Emmy for being a writer on the Daily Show. But he lives on the East Coast so that makes him bright, and not a celebrity. He can write, so that immediately disqualifies him from living near Los Angeles.

Does smog affect brain function?   

Writers aren’t celebrities, they are … er … writers and no one knows who they are, unless they go to the Manalapan Headquarters of the Monmouth County Library to hear Lew P’s nephew speak on October 3^rd, 2009 at 2 PM.     

The boys at the cock’n’bull session all raised a cup of Latte to his achievement. If we weren’t at Starbucks, Mutt might have order a round of Murphys’ for the boys, but they don’t stock that. It would take up the room in the cooler meant for the hard Blueberry Scones and the crummy coffee crumb-cakes.

More importantly, they would need a liquor license, and we don’t need to make Corzine’s Cronies richer. Tax the poor and the rich and give the money to a son of an #itch. We’re trying to maintain that PG rating.

The only problem the state of New Jersey has is that McSpeedy, Corzine (remember his 90 mph accident on his way to the Imus disaster with the Rutgers women’s basketball team) is being challenged by McGreedy, Christie (he loans money to other politicians, charges interest and doesn’t declare it on taxes, while he was the state attorney general? Esquire my ass.) meaning our next governor will have shifty-beady eyes either way.  

Tink says, “Absolute dworks toast with decaffeinated Lattes. Not awesome, but bore some.” It’s the thought that counts and not the buzz from the drink. Elliot congratulations and keep up the good work.

Tink also thinks Lew P brings some class to the table, but she wears five earrings in the cartilage of her right ear. I love the Pixie, but class is not the forte of my babe or me. Blue collar and blue jeans, and Blue Moon, the song or the beer, that’s what I am talking about.     

The cock ‘n’ bull sessions put things in perspective. Dr. Bowel came by and sat down. Just as Lew P. arrived, Manley Eskwire left. He is a friend of Dr. Bowel and an acquaintance therefore of Lew P. Me, the Mad Mutt, I don’t know him an inch or a mile.

I think he’s a retired poker player who now supports himself by practicing the law. His training was bluffing Dolly Doyle and Crazy Mike, so getting past a judge or a jury is a piece of cake. Maybe he can advise the winner of the Gubernatorial election? They both have a lot of bluffing to do.    

All of us know that life needs a laugh along the way, and Lew P sees life with a crooked sense of vision. Manley calls him the Devil’s Advocate, but coming from a lawyer that’s almost sour grapes, which gets us back to wine.

That bottle of Korbel that went missing New Years, I never completed the story. It was found in Jayson’s room and Pam had a kitten, but not Mrs. Leary’s cat, which was keening outside in the bramble most of January first.

Jayson said he liked the label on the champagne bottle. He said it without hiccupping.

Tink took the bottle away, and Svettie made a dogface that meant she knew how Jay got it. So the mystery is solved, but Pam is missing the happy ever after part.

Jay didn’t visit the bathroom much January 1^st so I think he got an empty bottle. That’s a good thing, because Svettie is wearing thin on Pam who asked to go to Sea Girt with Arthur and I. She wants to borrow the Colt. Svettie could predict the trajectory of the fired bullet as she is a rocket scientist.

Even Tink thought Svettie, her sister, might have overstayed her welcome. Svettie blasted off to Boston and the Aerospace Engineering Lab at MIT the next day. Why does a rocket scientist need a GPS to find Boston from New Jersey? Another question to which I don’t know the answer. 

Back to now. We’re sitting outside of Starbucks on the patio enjoying the late summer heat, 78 degrees, and shooting the cock’n’bull. Not with a gun, with our mouths. You can imagine how much cock’n’bull is chatted when you realize the participants are three old physicians and a poker-playing lawyer.

Sum total four DOE’s without restraints.     

Lew P wanted to talk about his Jets and the victory over New England, but since Dr. Bowel is a Giant fan, and Manley would only be interested in football if he could bet it, the conversation died before Mutt could start a J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets cheer. I guess will have to change the name back to Jets from Jests, since they are doing so well.

Arthur, my FBI friend, continues to talk about the Mets, because his Phillies are doing better than the Philadelphia Beagles.

You think they are the Philadelphia Eagles, no. They are a bunch of dogs. And with Michael Vick as your quarterback he’ll violate parole if he rejoins the team.  

The Tennessee Titans came into the Meadowlands like lions, but left as tamed moutons (French for lambs). I had to fumble around for that bad pun.

All hail King Rex. We’re relyin’ on Ryan. Go JETS, and next week NO Saints.    

Manley was hot that the poker tournament at Atlantic City was on the weekend of the eve of Yom Kippur. He didn’t want to gamble on the holiest day of the year. That led everyone to believe that the really high rollers aren’t Jewish.

Myer Lansky would turn over in his grave.

Oh almost forgot, the on going saga of the creature from Mutt’s wild rose bramble. Sounds like a 1950’s grade B horror movie.

Lance came back and all three traps were empty. There was no bait and no capture. He probed the hole and it doesn’t go in more than 2 feet, so it is probably not a den or lair. He thinks the creature lives in the rocks that he couldn’t move, because they are too deep in the bramble, and too large.

He also thinks that the traps captured field mice or other small mammals, and they were a buffet for the creature from the wild rose bramble.

We await Lance’s next move, but he thinks that Mrs. Leary’s cat is lucky, because what ever the creature from the wild rose bramble is, it is a carnivore.

I guess if I don’t rescue that gib then my problem with the keening at night will solve itself. Most carnivorous snakes and mammals are nocturnal feeders. If the snake is big enough, it can devour the whole kitty. A wild dog would have a field day.

Something won’t allow me to let that castrato suffer more than he has. He lost his testicles, a eunuch experience. To compensate, he has become too big for his britches. It sounds like a non sequitur, but it is an accurate statement. Think about it. 

Using my theory of deflating puffed up DOE’s, I’ll tell him that he’s firing blanks at all his bitches. Then he’ll stop calling attention to himself, like a pimp who has lost all his working girls.      

I’m taking up a collection for replacement of my cashmere coat. Crawling in the brambles to rescue the capon, it is getting dirty too frequently. I have to find a solution, and soon.  

Black Racer Snake - constrictor carnivore.

I am the Mad Mutt, and you are not, so what do you care.

Jayson, Arthur, Lance and Mutt on the dreary dreary horrible day.

 

The image was obtained  at www.alanamous.com/page/2 on sept. 20th 2009.

The sky blanketed us with the dirty fleece of a grubby lamb. Gray shadows wrapped Jersey shore, everywhere. We waited for the wash water from the sky to cleanse us, and make the day better. But God held back the heavenly rinse cycle. We got heavy clouds, but no rain.

The demons of autumn honed the air to an edge the summer can’t possess and the chill invaded our sweaters. Despite our best efforts, autumn toddled nearer like a child learning to walk. Is that why they call it the fall?  

Jay had a half-day at Kindergarten, and Lance dropped by to look into the bramble. We were his audience as he investigated what lived under my wild rose bramble.

He wore a gray-green ski cap over his shaven head. I am not sure why young guys shave their heads but it is the style, and who would argue with Kojak. Can they all be going pre-maturely bald?

He knelt, probing deeper into the brambles, while modeling pants styles for plumbers. Jay giggled seeing Lance’s heinie, covered his mouth with one tiny hand, and pointed vigorously with the other. He followed the etiquette of a Kindergartener.  

During this earth shaking moment, Arthur Frank drove up in, what else, a Crown Vic with government plates. Did President Ford sign an exclusive contract with his namesake to supply government vehicles? I wonder if President O’Bummer rides in a Ford? His car must have a webcam camera, so he won’t lose airtime.

Arthur, military and FBI, commented that I looked like the mangy mutt today. I just haven’t had time to get to Mike the Barber. We call him that to distinguish him from Conan the Barbarian. They are twins separated at birth like Arnold and Danny. Mike did not grow up to be the governor of California or a Terminator. He's registered safe with scissors, so sleeping in the chair isn't a risk. 

My Isro looks more like a Rasta do than a kosher mop. Tink has started calling me Marley. Jay wants to know why she uses a dog’s name for me.

Art yelled to me, “Boyo, going over to Sea Girt to pop off a few rounds. Want to come?”

“Watchin’ Jay, don’t want him around loud noises. The M1911A is broken down for cleaning anyway.”

I did not want Jayson to hear the word gun or Colt, as he had a fascination with them when his mother was an active FBI agent. He learned Colt .45 as the name of my gun when I brought it back home after being shot. For his safety, and he is a curious George if there ever was one, the Colt stays locked in the floor safe of the shore house.

He played cowboys and Indians up to 3 months ago, hiding in closets and ambushing me with a cap pistol. The first time, almost gave me another stroke, but now he plays secret agent. Less loud noises and surprises, so I fully expect to live another year or two, and not face a sudden traumatic medical episode. No pacemaker needed at this time.

 Tink played a DVD of Dr. No for him on a rainy day, and now he wants to go undercover. When we walk Bubs at the shore, he runs on the beach and hunts for conch shells like they did in the movie. At the Jersey shore, he’s more likely to find small shells, old syringes, and used condoms. Just kidding, that was the old Ciba-Geigy days at the shore. The beaches have been especially clean and beautiful this summer. On a scale of 0 to 10, beach cleanliness was a 9.   

My favorite character in Dr. No 

is obvious. But what man who was a teenager during the release of this movie could feel otherwise. To quote Tink, "WOWZER. Ursula Undressed, I mean Andress. 

Because of the James Bond attitude, Pam bought Jayson a video game Golden Eye Rogue Agent. He plays the video game as often as he watches the Telebubbies and Sesame Street. So the less talk about shooting guns the better.

Culture shock meets childhood with a bang. He hasn’t asked for a child-sized tuxedo, and he can’t seem to learn the rules to Baccarat Chemin de fer.  

 He dressed Bubs as a French secret agent. The dog seemed to like the disguise thinking she was human, hidden, and unrecognizable. 

Maybe she likes the human pup enough to put up with all his silliness. She never had a litter, maternal instincts and all that. 

In another salute to 007, Tink claims last New Year’s Eve Jay developed a taste for the bubbly. Her spinster sister, Svetlana Angelucci was visiting at the time, (her first name has been changed to protect the humor). 

.

A bottle of Korbel Brut was missing in action on January 2nd, but I think Svettie requisitioned it for her room after watching the ball drop in Times Square. She needed something inanimate with which to cuddle. She doesn't do well with living, feeling things, like dogs, and cats, and especially humans. I think she might be better with aliens, not the Mexicans who work in the restaurants but the aliens from Neptune ... not Neptune NJ, but Interstellar Neptune, as in Mars, Venus, because she is out of this world and works to put people out of this world. More on that later.

Jay wasn’t hung over the next day, and it was a whole bottle. Once a Marine Military Police Investigator, always solving crimes. Maybe the sisters shared it before I woke up to watch the football games on January 1^st – go Rutgers - who knows, who cares.

Maybe it was Svettie who gave Jay his first taste that night. She’d do it for a laugh, like giving catnip to a cat and watching. 

Wouldn’t put it past her. Pam would kill the interloper if she knew. She has gone with Art and I to Sea Girt and out shot the both of us, and Art is marksman rated with a handgun. My rating is below that, significantly.

New Years Eve, Tink and I were snuggling on the couch from 11:30 PM to 3:00 AM January 1^st. We didn’t need champagne. The bubbles of champagne disturb my eyebrows. When you pass 55 years old, your eyebrows grow so long they curl like Shirley Temple’s hair and develop nerves that can sense the wind from a tsunami in Japan while standing at the Jersey shore. The bubbles are annoying. Ask Andy Rooney. Mike the Barber charges 2 bucks extra and uses a lawnmower to trim them.

Tink likes them long, claiming it’s fun to brush them against the grain. I put up with that but …  You can see my problem with the eyebrows, not to mention the tongue.

I think Tink is in denial as to why all the Murphy’s Stout was gone 24 hours after her sister’s arrival. The Chardonnay went next, 6 bottles in 3 days. I didn’t up my intake, although her sister gave everyone orders, and therefore I had justification.

She even had Bubs fetching things for her, and we never taught Bubs to fetch. She’s a poodle not a retriever. That’s like asking a Jewish American Princess to do the laundry, by hand, in the river, on a stone.   

Svettie got on Bubs nerves to the point where she brought me the beret and glasses, scratched the floor begging me to put them on her. Stupid poodle, like that would help. 

Svettie threw Lew P off the computer while he and I were going over a scene for the Fatal Blow, so that she could read her e-mails. She had brought her laptop with her and the shore house has wifi. She didn’t want to go up to her dormer bedroom (yeah, I can’t stand sleeping and living on the same floor with her), and get her computer. She tried to figure out how to tell Bubs to pick it up without teeth marks, but the canine was having none of that. So she sent Lew P to Siberia for a half hour, while the pleasant sound of “You’ve got mail” played from the desktop. 

Worse yet, after making large amounts of alcohol disappear, Svetlana can walk a straight line and talk normally, which means she’s had practice, probably on straight Vodka, hence the name.  

The way to tell the booze has affected her is the subtle degree of hostility increase. From yes to yeah what, and from please to the royal command of do it, i.e. “Doc is that you who just came in from raking leaves? Bring my glass of wine here. I’m watching Oprah.”     

We’ll cut her a break since her four-year relationship with a guy who worked for Bear-Stearns went up in smoke. Truly that is what happened. They caught him smoking the weed in the men’s room and he was fired, right before everyone at Bear-Stearns was fired or absorbed. He is unemployed and she refuses to support him with her job as a computer programmer for NASA. 

Yup, a polluted rocket scientist destroying the ozone, and creating ethanol breath.   

Back to our dreary, dreary day, Arthur picked up on not using the word gun or Colt, and walked from the car to the yard to see what made Jay giggle. From the street, he couldn’t see Lance’s heinie buck in and out of the brambles in a very obscene manner. Jay was too young to understand, but I had a chuckle, as he lunged in and out of the bush, grabbing rocks and placing them near his feet.

Repetitively, Lance on his knees, springing forward to straight, reaching his arms over his head into the center of the bramble, and pulling back to a compact size, carrying rocks to pile near his shoes. The upper half of his body disappeared and appeared in a steady rhythm. The gray ski cap on his baldhead only added to the effect of safe bramble probing.

When Arthur made it to the corner of the house he stopped. It took him 20 seconds to understand what he saw. A smile percolated onto his face, as he reached the same suggestive conclusion as I. Old men, and the gutter, constant companions, hey. Those who can’t do, teach. I remember that adage from my residency in orthopedics. For old men, those who can’t do, well they just keep thinking about it, but …      

“That half-exposed heinie belongs to Lance.” I said, “Something, a snake, a field mouse, a shrew lives in the bramble. Mrs. Leary’s cat thinks it’s something good to eat. I am getting tired of that pseudo-lion being ensnared by my roses. Lance is the MPI of animal control. Unlike the official county people, he has no rules, just like us in Nam.”

“What’s he going to do with it when he catches it?” Art asked.

“If it’s a snake he’ll keep in his zoo/farm. If it’s a mammal, I guess it’s food for the farm. I’m finished crawling in that briar. That’s all I know.”

Jayson said, “Granddaddy looks like a baby when he crawls in there, but his heinie is covered.” Then he whispered to Art. “But granddad’s butt is bigger.”

Art mumbled, ”military, they teach you to CYA, all the time, unlike plumbers.”

“Jay, I had more time to develop my ass.”

Jay laughed loudly. “Grand dad said a bad word. I’m telling mommy you said that.”

“That’s ok, just don’t tell Tink.”

Jayson raised a puzzled look and turned to see Lance putting out traps around the entrance to the creature’s den. He baited each of them with different foods.

“That should do her.” Lance said, as he climbed from his knees to his feet. He dusted off his knees, and wiped his hand across his bald pate, pushing back his ski cap, grabbing it and squeezing it like a wet wash cloth. “Now we just wait.”

He walked away from the bramble, but never bothered to tug up his pants. They made his butt look as flat as an ice pond. He never looked back as he climbed into his Mustang.

I stopped Jayson from giggling and told him that wasn’t polite, but I had trouble keeping a straight face.

Art said, “He shouldn’t expose his brains to the sunlight, might dry them out completely.”

I countered, “Guess it’s his lucky day, no direct sun. Want to go inside and heft a Murphy’s or two?”

“Got go to Sea Girt, need the scores to stay employed. See ya soon.”

So Art left and Jay ran back in the house. It was no surprise that Rogue Agent blasted from the television set in the den when I followed him in.

The Mad Mutt and the horrible, dreary, desolate, desultory, but not dampened day.

I am the Mad Mutt, be grateful that you are not. 

Unsung real heroes, the Big Owl, and Anti-heroes who were well-sung long ago

Lew P and I were shooting the breeze at a Starbucks near the hospital and the new annex where I have a consultation office. He’s too busy writing to see patients and I’m too busy seeing consults to take a longer lunch.

I’d prefer a hero from Sorrento’s Subs I’d accept one from Jersey Mike’s . I’d buy one from Subway , if that were the only option. A hero is a hero.

But we’re sitting al fresco, enjoying the fresh New Jersey air, lattes, and croissant sandwiches, real effete New Yorker type stuff, not big and bold macho like a New Jersey hero-sub dripping in vinegar, basil and oil. The type that leaks on and ruins your Salvatore Ferragamo tie , but you still don’t care. To make matters worse, they don’t serve Murphy’s at Starbucks. They should, but they don’t. Murphy’s Stout .

My friend Dr. Bowel joins us, and the three of us are yakking away. Dr. Bowel had a break in his schedule, looking up people’s poop way. He does from the top down and the bottom up. He doesn’t realize GI tracts are a one-way street running only south. He’s good, and he does mine when I run out of excuses and actually take care of my health.

That’s when Lew P started talking about heroes. Arthur Frank, my friend at the FBI, everyone calls him a hero when his work is known, because it can be life and death. Police, firemen all are heroes for us.

Doctors like Dr. Bowel are heroes too. Not because he has been a patient and fights back everyday, not letting his disease win. He is a hero, because he works with people who are infectious as well as sick. Physicians qualify as heroes because they put themselves at risk for the betterment of those they treat.

Patients ignore this fact because it is a doctor’s job, and expected, but it is still fact. Doctors have to be ready to be exposed to risk 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Our little group was doing the cock’n’bull thing, talking about President O’Bummer, and his vast television exposure. Omnipresent – ala FDR and radio in the 30’s. Those who don’t recognize history relive it daily, political Altzheimers.

We will not debate whether he is a hero or not here. Dr. Bowel and Lew P beat that horse to Russian stew over the lattes. Talk to your loved ones about that during Thanksgiving or watch the Cowboys on television; he’ll probably pre-empt them. I refuse to fix the broken bones, which will surely be the end result of a passionate political discussion.

While we are talking and being very political – read emotional and passionate – out of the blue walks Dr. Big Owl. Dr. Big Owl is a hero and people don’t have any idea how courageous he is.

He looks like any other large human, oversized brown horn rimmed glasses with round lenses ala Sally Jesse Raphael. He is barrel-chested, with long straight brown hair neatly tied in a ponytail that splits his shoulder blades. He lumbers with a rolling waddle to his gait that makes you think of a Sasquatch.

Source of Sasquatch photo. 

But he is hardly inarticulate or sub-human or that hairy. He is a hero.

He wears a swatch watch, his high school class ring, and a pocket full of pens – see physician’s phobias about running out of ink in the Fatal Blow – without a pocket protector. The pens are mainly Bics and Paper Mates. He wears knit-ties not Ferragamo’s. Just an average joe, but he is a hero, making this Mad Mutt feel like a wannabe.

The Mad Mutt wants to make things right and correct injustice. That is why I became a doctor. My karma needs the balance of doing good, not that I was any worse than any other human, but I felt that need.

I was a hero once, and that was when I practiced orthopedics full time with full surgical privileges. The general public doesn’t realize how heroic doctors were in the 1970’s and 1980’s when less was understood about HIV – AIDS. The physician was at risk for infection by the undetected or non-declaring positive tester. The transmission of HIV from patient to physician was not as publicized as the transmission the other way. The infection roadway was and is a two directional street.

Do not take this blog’s meaning the wrong way, I have empathy for both the positive tester and those exposed but not yet positive. My concept of a good doctor includes empathy for the patient, whether they have a cold or cancer, and for everything in between those two diagnoses.

Maybe I’m just an ole Mad Mutt, but physicians are the guardians of the most precious treasure a human can own, good health. They are always fighting, as the guys in the white hats, to prolong a patient’s health. But in order for them to do so, they put themselves at risk.

This is a fact that the patients ignore. When a doctor leans down and listens to the chest of the patient with pneumonia, he breathes in that patient’s air. He is risking contracting that virus or bacteria and thereby getting that pneumonia.

When a physician spends time touching and closely examining a sick human he has no protective shield that guarantees him immunity. The sicker the patient, and the more complex the clinical presentation, the longer the physician must spend in proximity to the patient.

In other words, the worse and more hidden the problem, the greater the risk to the doctor, and the longer the exposure for him, the larger the amount of courage he demonstrates in treating that patient.

Compare this to the insurance company executive whose greatest fear daily is whether someone parked in his space, or will the executive dining room’s lunch be served on time. Is this Duck L’Orange . subtly over cooked? Where is that white wine? Heroic questions if I ever heard one.

Big Owl goes one step further than the average physician; he is an Infectious Disease Specialist. That means he treats patients that can give him a disease all day and all night. He is the one running the HIV – AIDS clinic at the hospital.

They draw bloods and treat with IV medications, both of which expose the staff and the physicians to risks that the general population can ignore – blood products. So the real heroes are the workers and physicians who man that clinic.

“But they are just doing their job man.” The whine of the ingrate public who can’t appreciate the risks of a soldier in the war against disease.

Big Owl must also be a masochist, because he is a Jets fan. But that is a psychological impairment, not physical. If he caught it from anyone, it was from his father. There maybe a genetic basis or predisposition to that disease. It is not infectious, as I have been unable to make Jayson a Jets fan. He and his mom bleed Giant blue. The cure for Big Owl and me is a quick dose of Rex Ryan, given visually, and via the auditory meatus.

The thought of Big Owl and the risks of HIV transmission to the surgeon during surgery made me remember someone who I thought was a hero, Dr. Lorraine Day. While Mutt and Lew P were training to be orthopedic surgeons, Lorraine was the chief of orthopedics at San Francisco General hospital. A victory in and of itself, because there weren’t any women heading up orthopedic departments even in Podunk at that time. She was a pioneer.

She detailed the risks of HIV transmission, especially during bloody trauma surgery. She used mathematical risk equations (actuarial tables) to demonstrate that the risk was higher than generally appreciated.

She dealt in science and proven cold facts.

She highlighted the courage and selflessness of trauma surgeons and surgeons in general. She worked in San Francisco where the density of HIV positive patients was higher than most other areas. She was a hero, apparently fearless.

It is 2009, not 1980, and I researched my hero for this blog. How disappointing to find that she resigned from her post and retired as an orthopedic surgeon in 1989, claiming the risk of HIV acquisition was too high and for her the stress was too great.

I guess even heroes have a threshold to discouragement. She was gallant for over ten years. I could still admire her during her retreat from the field of battle.

In 1992, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and showed courage in fighting that disease as a patient. She renewed my faith in her as a hero. She claimed after a recurrence and treating herself that she had gained another remission and probably was cured.

She has subsequently claimed to know the origin of cancer, and the optimal treatment for cancer. I will not dwell on the facts she presents because they are not what is important. She threw out the theories of western medicine and replaced them with hers. They include: “sugar is as addictive as cocaine” and “paralyzes the immune system for four hours.” She has stated that “the more milk you drink, the more osteoporotic you become.” These statements were taken from her biographical article on the Wikipedia web site.

On that site is a list of conspiracies to which Dr. Day is said to subscribe and my conclusion is that she has become paranoid. Maybe she always was, and my hero worship was misplaced even in the 1980’s. Back then, at times she spoke about HIV patients with significant distrust, hinting that they were involved in covering up their disease. Because of the stigma involved, at that time, who could blame them, apparently Dr. Day.

Finally she testified on behalf of Ernst Zündel (termed a neo-nazi, who was arrested in Canada for publishing literature, which "is likely to incite hatred against an identifiable group." He was considered a national security threat in Canada, and charged with inciting racial hatred in Germany.) In 2003, Dr. Day testified for his release from a Canadian prison, in which, he awaited deportation for trial in Germany on the charges of inciting racial hatred.

He is a Holocaust denier who claimed he cured his own terminal cancer using a method similar to the one that Dr. Day proclaims she discovered. It uses herbal treatments. She claimed the Canadian government was denying him access to the medicines, and thereby caused a relapse, in a covert attempt to kill him.

All this proves is that once a hero, not always a hero. Sometimes we misinterpret actions as heroic, when they were generated by intents and psychology that was different and unique in origin. We can only judge the actions and not the intent. Good results can eventuate from evil intent, or twisted logic; and certainly, bad results and disasters can occur when good intentions go awry.

Mutt says look no further than the Fatal Blow where killing Shark-face Neinstine to better the healthcare of the community seemed an immoral act with good results. An evil act contemplated for the best of reasons. When it finally happened, it was the twisted, evil mind of an egocentric person who accomplished the good deed. The action flowed from self-interest, not creating a better environment for the community. The murderer cannot be called a hero, because of the egocentric base to the action, yet the community benefited with the result. Go figure.

I wish Dr. Day health in the rest of her life. I hope that she can find the peace that she deserves, although a self-tortured soul can never escape its torturer. I hope in her zealot’s pursuit of her cause that she does not rob the precious gift of the chance of recovery from those who would believe in her, like some Ponzi healthcare scheme.

To be confident that a treatment can work enough times to make the probability of a successful treatment high, one must test the method in a population of significant size over a significant time period with a control group as a comparison, and long term follow up, years. Only when such testing is performed can a method be called scientifically proven to benefit the patient.

Scientific medical innovations move like a sloth, because if they ran like a Gazelle they would end badly too often. Mutt’s momma always said, “If it sounds to good to be true, it is.” Simple as that.

My former hero has bypassed the testing step. She has not used a statistically significant test population to prove her theory is successful, and therefore, even if she is right, she has become the seller of unproven dreams, and is listed on Quackwatch.org. ¹

Anecdotal endorsements from Jane Doe proves that it worked for Jane Doe or she really likes the seller or the seller paid her for her opinion. “I’m not a sick person but I play one on a web site?” Come on man.

Would you invest your money with Bernie, then why invest your health with ….

Heroes place themselves at risk for the betterment of others.

To place others at risk for the betterment of oneself makes you the anti-hero in my book.

In 2004 the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus reviewed Dr. Day’s infomercial used to promote Dr. Lorraine Day's "Cancer Doesn't Scare Me Any More" video in which she claims to have cured herself of metastatic breast cancer with a program featuring diet and prayer. They concluded in November 2004, that Dr. Stephen Barrett’s complaint was justified. Dr. Barrett is listed as a consumer advocate. ⁵

I have base all these statements on the information presented on the web and from Dr. Day’s web site as well as Wikipedia.

On her website, Dr. Day warns her critics that she will pray for them, but she promises that God will not deal punishment or retribution. Her enemies will reap what they sow. I sow the hope that scientifically proven methods of treatment are offer to every patient, and I preclude nothing except those methods that exclude the proven methods in favor of anecdotal dreams. Alternative medicine that can be used along side the proven treatments are welcome, even if the science is not proven yet, because they uphold the ultimate law of being a good physician. “First do your patient no harm.”

I’m just asking that she make an effort to become a hero again, and scientifically document that which she has discovered.

It has been proven scientifically that the immune system responds to positive emotional stimuli by responding more strongly to antigens. In stress the immune system responds in a diminished pattern. There is the science, go from there, but use that with proven theories, please, go and prove your theory, now.

I truly believe in visualization as a method to augment treatment of disease. It has been proven that laughing helps the recovery process in an objective way, via systematic study.

All I ask of Dr. Day is to prove that your system can be consistently successful by using objective testing and standards in a control environment over time.

No one is above the laws of nature and God. Not even his true prophets, ask Peter, ask Mohammed, ask Moses.

Back to Big Owl, he is a hero, as are the surgeons and the doctors who risk personal injury, disease and disability to make us healthy. They go under-appreciated because they are just doing their job. If they do it really well, then we never know how courageous they really are.

Thank a doctor today. You never know, you might need him tomorrow.

These links are used as reference concerning the information on Dr. Lorraine Day:

1. http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/day.html

2. http://www.drday.com/

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorraine_Day

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Zündel

5. http://www.infomercialwatch.org/reports/nadcomplaint.shtml

As always, I am the Mad Mutt. You are neither mad nor a mutt. Thank your lucky stars for that.

PS --> Lance was at the shore house Monday, and crawled into the rose bramble, more about that another time.