Lexington, Ky. a gentle, lovely, city. The book tour is entering another phase, past the mid-point. I’ve had nearly a dozen events, all but one very successful. Big crowds, great questions, lots of book sales. I am figuring out how to talk about the novel, and every day the tour goes on, I meet more and more people who have read it, and can give me responses to it. That’s valuable for me.
Book tours are something of an endurance contest, and we are all wearing out. My voice is shot, I haven’t slept much, running out of clean clothes, and I am tired. Sometimes, when I first go into a bookstore, I am sick of myself, tired of hearing myself speak. So I am thinking of different ways to talk about the book and when I get going, I revive. I don’t want people to ever feel that I am sick of talking to them. It’s not about that, it’s about weariness. This weekend, I’ll have a chance to recharge, get home and rest up. Then back on the road next Tuesday. Some have come a long way to hear me. I realize that when you bring Izzy, people are thrilled. He is thronged by people who want to see and photograph him. Some people grab him and touch him in ways that are not appropriate for dogs – they don’t like to be grabbed and handled roughly. But most people just love meeting and watching him, and he has been a star all week, like the movie stars on the red carpet. He is selling a lot of books.
Izzy is maintaining his aplomb and I appreciate him very much.
We are packing up and heading for Ohio and Bainbridge Library. I will be blogging along the way, from the Ipad, about the book tour. We have found a motel somewhere in Ohio.
An interesting side issue has popped up. I had dinner with my friend Dr. Debra Katz, a wonderful psychiatrist and an empathetic thinker about the human/animal bond (she is writing the preface for my book on grieving for animals.) She urged me to get regular bloodwork done to test for various things, and I told her I was evolving in a different way.
With the agreement of my physician, I had decided to only go to doctors when I feel sick, not to engage in what I consider the epidemic of preventive medical care that seems to spawn expensive tests, medications, and a culture of feeling ill and anxious. It is a narcisstic cultur. I have always grown older in unconventional ways – moving to the farm, foregoing medication for diabetes and changing the way I live. Debbie, who I respect tremendously, argued that tests can spot deteriorating conditions. I’m sure they can.
I told her I had considered buying an exercycle recently, and then rejected it. I walk with Maria or the dogs instead. It’s just more comfortable for me.
Debbie, a physician, knows her stuff. I posted a reference to this discussion, and one person immediately urged me not to be “stupid” on Facebook, and to get the tests.
These things are personal choices and I resist the idea that there is only one philosophy for me or everyone else, or that I have to follow the conventional wisdom, especially when it involves a system that is such a universally recognized and hideous mess. My coming of age involves learning to see past anxiety and panic to the kind of life I want to live. I am very active and eat very carefully. I am healthier and feel better than at any point in my adult life. I have doctor who shares my view that modern medicine isn’t always looking for health, and has dubious ties to lawyers, pharmaceutical and insurance companies. I don’t want to live a life of pills and prescriptions, expensive procedures. That may cost me down the line. I’ll take my chances. I’m not going to live forever.
A couple of years ago, one of my former doctors urged me to try an experimental medication that reduces the risk of prostate cancer. You ought to try it, he told me. Any side effects? Yes, he said, sleeplessness, nausea, and one another. “It sort of turns you into a girl. You grow small breasts.” No thanks, I said. I’ll run the risk. Nobody thought I should get divorced or buy a farm or write a novel about a dog either. The best things in my life have been the things nobody thought I ought to do.
I do go to doctors when I am ill. I don’t want to live a preventive life, a life of tests pills and prescriptions. The health care system I see is hardly so efficient and humane that one should join it without a lot of thought. I don’t want to into the cold and expensive mess that is the American idea of health, a system dependent on tests, procedures and pills (as well as some good and life saving things). Maria agrees with me. It isn’t the life we want.
If that’s stupid, I’ll live with it. I kind of like being a guy, I’m getting better at it.
