A Rule Violated Today: “Avoid Lawyers and Doctors, As Much As Possible”

One of my mantras is the following:

‘“It is a good year when you don’t have to see either a doctor or a lawyer.”

Yesterday I dealt with both lawyers and doctors. Why did I break my rule? And in the same day? Let me explain.

Firstly, I served my day of jury duty. I had been called up to perform my “civic responsibility” in the justice system last fall, but as I was coaching high school tennis in the afternoon I postponed it as far into the future as possible. That meant I had to go to court yesterday, Valentine’s Day. The court would give me no further extensions.

I am fortunate in that I am a government employee and so I still get paid during jury duty. The court definitely noticed, and they seemed to be licking their chops for me to be eligible to serve on a complicated court case which “would last approximately four weeks.” The charges against the defendant were heinous – multiple counts of sexual assault with a child – and my heart sort of sunk when the judge announced them. I stared at the defendant and his lawyer, and I wondered. The defendant had the shitty short hair cut of prison, and he was tall, thin, and looked to be about 60-years old. He had cheap formal clothes on for the trial, probably bought by the court, and the public defender for indigent defendants. I knew that child sexual predators did not change: a dog that bites is a dog that bites. His life almost for sure had been a hard and miserable one: lots of prison time, where child molesters did not do well. Jeez. 

I did not want to spend four weeks learning about the sordid story of this man’s “alleged” crimes. It was going to be among the uglies of crimes and an ugly story over many ugly years. Did I want to spend four weeks learning the sordid details of it? Nope.

The judge dutifully reminded us that these charges were only allegations, and that the defendant was innocent until proven guilty. I filled out the fifteen page questionnaire about my personal history, exposure to the justice system, and feelings about sexual assault crimes. I’m pretty sure the defense lawyer would strike me from the jury pool for about four good reasons, and I will be thrilled to avoid listening to testimony about child molestation from sex crimes detectives and the alleged victims themselves. They read the names of all these possible witnesses, and it sounds complicated. It was a family affair, with alcoholism involved. There was no evidence other than victim testimony (“he said she said”) of a child who was the niece, I think, of the defendant. The crimes took place a long time ago. I will be happy not to have to sit in judgment on this strange looking man who, if the charges are true, is a monster. We are talking about California PC 288(a) –

“a person who willfully and lewdly commits any lewd or lascivious act, upon or with the body, or any part or member thereof, of a child who is under the age of 14 years.”

Yuck. A child molester, allegedly. A sexual predator on the most vulnerable. Wow. Count me out.

The courtroom I was in yesterday – with the armed bailiffs, the prosecuting attorney, defense attorney and defendant, court reporter and clerk, 70 possible jurors, and a presiding judge – was about as dramatic and imposing as it looks in the movies. It is the drama of a criminal trial in front of a jury and judge. I found what I saw to be a weird mixing of the highly lurid and fantastical (serial child molestation, chronic alcoholism, family dysfunction), mixed in with boring and tedious courtroom bureaucracy and waiting. If thorough and scrupulous, the law is neither quick nor efficient.

And there is the fact of being in the law courts. The last time I was there was to witness the sentencing of the woman who ran over and killed my friend while “impaired.” You walk around and you see the cops talking with their buddies while getting ready to testify outside the courtroom, the hard-looking criminal-types one would expect to see in court also hanging about – and the lawyers who wear expensive suits like a uniform (or a mask), not much different than a police uniform or judge’s robes. The government building gives a shabby feeling to the whole surroundings. Look at this bathroom door on the first floor of the courtroom building, for example –

– and behold the wood of the bathroom door rubbed through by innumerable hands pushing the door open over many years. This door should have been replaced years ago but wasn’t. The courthouse is clean, sort of, but everything is rundown. The judge explained that the seat cushions we sat on in the courtroom were only four months old, and that the previous ones were 48-years old and totally falling apart when finally they were replaced. “We hope to use these new cushions for the next 40 or so years, so please treat them well,” the judge explained. The public courthouse is like a public bathroom or public school: since everybody owns it, nobody owns it. So it is shabby. 

“Why would anyone want to be around this place, if they had a choice?” I wondered to myself. Victims, victimizers, cops, lawyers, trials, jail. Yuck.

A wise man would try to stay away from all that, as much as possible. That is how I look at it. But jury duty is jury duty. It is obligatory, not optional.

Luckily, I was not chosen to be on this jury. I would have been ready to do so, if I were chosen, but I would not have liked it. This was the second jury duty experience where I filled out all the paperwork, sat around for two full days to sit on a jury, and was not even questioned by one of the lawyers before I was finally excused and released. I sat there all day long waiting. Many complain that jury duty is a “cattle call” experience, like being drafted into the army for a year, where your time is not used well by a clumsy government. It is not for no reason. The judge knew this and apologized to us jurors repeatedly.

But I always leave court with respect for the lawyers and judges I encounter there. For them the idea of a “fair trial” and “innocent until proven guilty” is a living reality. That is obvious. But the whole legal process is so sordid and degrading that I want to take a shower when I get home. I have never heard of someone talking with a lawyer when something good was happening in their life. Lawyers mean trouble.

So I seek to avoid them, at least professionally.

Usually I am successful.

That deals with the “lawyer” part of my mantra. What about the “doctor”?

Well, that same day I also went to see the doctor. I had not been there in years.

There are those who haunt the doctor’s office with real or imagined conditions, and these individuals are known by name and suspected of being “hypochondriacs.” They are an annoyance, I am sure. Then there are those, like me, who are entirely the opposite. I don’t go to the doctor soon enough. I don’t go to the doctor when I should. I go when forced to do so and the problem has often gotten worse than if it had been caught early. Doctors call people like me “fools.” Hypochondriacs might annoy them, but people like me exasperate them. It can be too late for doctors to help.

That is why I ended up in the doctor’s office, a bit embarrassed, with a black blister-like spot on my right chest that I first noticed some four months earlier. I hoped it would just go away, and I suspect some sort of skin cancer maybe? But it just kind of got hard to the touch – like a little nodule or tumor. It itched a bit. It did not go away. I was in more than a bit of denial. I was busy almost literally everyday with driving my daughters around and everything else in a busy crowded life. Finally, I made an appointment to see the doctor. I have Kaiser Insurance, and one of the reasons I so seldom go to the doctor is because their red tape and bureaucracy make it hard to get an appointment. I think it is their unofficial way of rationing care by making it difficult to get in to see a doctor – all in the interest of “preserving scarce healthcare resources” – ie. saving money and remaining profitable – ie. rationing care.

I finally got on the phone, complained sufficiently, and secured an appointment. 

I ended up spending almost an hour with the doctor. We held a painful, candid conversation.

She said the spot was most probably a basal skin cancer tumor. She told me it was probably not melanoma, but it was instead a sort of “lazy cancer.” I had a biopsy of the suspected tumor scheduled for ten days later. We will know more after the biopsy results come back. But…

Cancer, cancer.

Cancer.

I have had so much cancer in my family. My mom was diagnosed with cancer the same age I currently am (she was 55-years old) and died some 14 months later at 56. Am I repeating history? It seems everyone in my family gets cancer sooner or later. So it begins with me. They will be hacking parts of skin cancer off the surface of me for the next thirty years. A lifetime of active Southern California outdoors sports catches up with me.

That was not the only bad news, although it was the worst of it.

Elevated blood sugar and cholesterol levels; sleep problems in late middle-age. Fasciculations all over my body, and tinnitus and neurological issues: all going back more than a few years. Stress and anxiety. The doctor mentioned that I need to get control of stress and anxiety in my life. She strongly hinted that the fasciculations and sleep disturbances – and maybe much else – had its roots in stress and anxiety. She urged me to cut down hugely on my caffeine consumption, and I plan to cut it out entirely.

But the stress and anxiety in my life.

I don’t think that is going to go away. I don’t even think I can reduce it much.

I repeat the following in my head: “I have 13 and 16-year old daughters who are a lot of work. I have a wife in perimenopause approaching full menopause. I have an 83-year old father declining in health and capacity. And I have a full-time job and all the other responsibilities of adult life.” There is no real way to change the painful realities of my life for the foreseeable future. It will be what will be – for about another five years or so.

I am getting older.

My doctors should be my friends. I pay them to watch over my health. And my health will only become a bigger and bigger problem in the future. I can already see they are going to be hacking small pieces of skin cancer off the surface of my body indefinitely. I gotta stay on top of that. One doctor a few years ago saw all the moles on my chest and said, “Gosh! You need to go live in Scotland or some place where the sun never shines! ” Of course, I continue to do what I have always done: stay very physically active in the sun doing sports all the time in Southern California. I do use sun protection on the skin, but it is very late in the game to prevent skin cancer. And I have like a gazillion cases of skin cancer in my extended family, and the DNA does not seem good. Same with diabetes. It is like they say: getting old ain’t for sissies.

But the stress and anxiety. That is what will kill you.

I read about all the heroin addicts who overdose in their 50s. It is not that they do more heroin than before; it is that their aging bodies can no longer process the heroin as well, and they overdose. What used to work for them no longer does. As we get older we are more vulnerable to the stresses and injuries life throws at us. Our bodies are less resilient. As we age we should learn to live healthier and to avoid unnecessary stress.

But how much stress is avoidable? How much is not?

What will the next five years of my life look like?

Will I live a longer life than my mother?

Or will I die at the same age – 56-years old?

“Avoid doctors but remain in close consultation with your doctors” – maybe that should be my new mantra. 

Don’t wait four months to get that suspicious dark growth looked at by a medical professional, you big dummy.

P.S. It turned out I had “basal cell” skin cancer on my chest. The helpful doctor informed me, “You will not die of this issue, which is more a nuisance than a threat.” They biopsied the tumor and then eventually cut it out. The doctor told me in the future to take a picture of any skin issues and email it to him instead of going through all the trouble to make an appointment and see him face-to-face.