Introduction: While Time and Chance Last
Written on October 26th, 2004; but perhaps the best forward to my diary as any entry I've composed, on the lens through which this diary is written...
Some weeks ago, ayradyss, med student / activist through the American Academy of Family Practice, and mdrnprometheus, med student / activist I've fought beside in my time from AMA circles, had another discussion about the intersection between medicine and politics with a familiar theme, with probably *the* central theme, one ayradyss captured in three brief sentences:
- Like so many things, I'm afraid it's going to come beyond crisis to desolation and the reality overwhelm us completely before something is done. And I don't have a lot of faith that "that something" is going to hold up.
Won't keep me from fighting though.
Not really much more that needed to be said about the future of medicine -- or the future, period -- than that.
The last two days I spent almost completely disconnected from the world, no e-mails, no scanning the news for federal actions the Civil Liberties Board of the University Senate needs to act on, no keeping track of issues in Iraq as related to the Doctor's Draft report I'm involved with, no evaluating the medical issues on the campaign trail that touch on our activist work, etc, etc, etc. Two days without rage, frustration, and threat assessment. It's been a while since I did that -- my road trips are usually *for* activist service. I hadn't realized how nice it would be to spend two days hiding from my work until I went out and accidentally did it.
Which, perhaps, in a sense is what my diary -- my own diary -- is supposed to be about. In my diary, I try, by and large, to be a storyteller. And a good storyteller gives his audience an escape from the world outside the tavern doors. By in large, he ought not bring it in with him.
There isn't a better call to arms I could possibly issue than those desdenova have been shouting from the barricade tops in her recent diary entries. (There isn't more I can say about the future than what I wrote since). And there aren't more things I could say about the fights I'm a part of that others have not said more eloquently -- or that most of you don't live, each and every day. A good doctor leaves his frustrations and his rage at work and does not bring it home, not when his family or his friends did not sign up for a life in the fights. And a good storyteller leaves the rainy world outside the tavern door.
I hadn't realized how used I've gotten to getting angry and fighting back, getting angry and fighting back, until I spent a weekend apart from it all, the first in a very, very long time. How important it is to have a place where the anger and the frustration and the rage and the fear stays outside, at least for a little while. My own diary, by my own choice, has largely been not a diary in any conventional sense, but a collection of stories, stories to be shared with friends, stories around a hearthfire, stories to help forget about the world outside. A place to come to celebrate and forget and ignore. Which is going to become only more important in days to come. I know what I have to do -- what I've been lucky enough to be a tiny part of. I don't need to bring that world home, and I don't need to bring it in here. I can't say more any better than others can, and I can't really tell you more than you already know. No point in letting the storm outside blow into the warmth of the Pub.
Because I can, at least, do that -- tell happy stories, of which I have many yet to tell. So many of my friends are lonely, so many are frustrated, so many are depressed, so many are trapped by old regrets and bowed by fears, the least I can do is tell a happy story. Or two, or three. Or many. Share the stories of laughter and friendship, and keep that happy flame of memory alive. Those are the stories I think you all would want most to hear, and the stories I much prefer to tell.
There isn't more I could say about the fights and the future that others cannot tell better and that most of you don't already, in the gut that whispers to you at night in the darkness, know. My talk matters nothing besides my fight. A good doctor, a good activist, leaves his fights at his work, and keeps his struggles apart from his family and his friends. A place free, even for a little while, from the storm is a valuable thing, as I learned, by accident, this glorious weekend past. And so I will try to do the same, here in this diary.
So pull up a seat, my friends. I've got pictures, and I've got stories. They'll be time enough for struggle later, and better writers than I to tell of it. Let us, while time and chance still last, in this, my own diary, share the happy --and each other. :-)