Patience please... Thursday, January 8, was the last time I answered any e-mail. The reason is that I have spent the last week in a hospital bed. My not feeling well on the Thursday resulted in a fever with various complications, and I ended up in the hospital. I'm now at home, the fever is gone, and I have reason to take it easy for a while. When I attended the RESTORE course Norman Weiss several times compared the preservation of a building to Doctoring. I am often concerned about the over- symplification of metaphors. On one hand Doctoring involves a conscious and sentient subject, a human being, and on the other it is a presumption for someone to assume they have a special expertise when in fact they do not. Buildings are not conscious. Many people working on buildings are limited in their knowledge. I am really amazed at how many opinions I have received on my condition over the last week. The Doctor shares information sparingly, remarking that all the test results are not in yet. My friends line up other Doctors, who are not party to the test results, and mention scary things that may, or may not, be in my future. A blood specialist runs into the room and blurts out a few statements then skitters away. My mother urges me to take care of myself. The fever makes my thinking on any statement run on and on. I wake up with a start, a nurse standing at the foot of my bed announces that I am not going to be fed so that I can go to for ultra-sound, then by lunch time it is evident that someone has forgotten... and I 'm getting nervous because the nurse gave me a pill to reduce my blood sugar, but no food to maintain my blood sugar... and I have a headache, and dreaming last night was laborious, let alone that I am afraid to fall asleep. The guy in the bed behind the curtain makes a lot of noise at night. The cleaning lady has an opinion, based on my ability to smile. My office mails me a section from a family medical book that talks about the spleen (they are saying mine is slightly enlarged - I over- contemplate what "slightly" means), and has a longer section on lymphomas, which is depressing, but set off by the fruit basket. At midnight two men stand outside the door to our room, at the water cooler, and argue if the ER should be mopped from north to south, or south to north. Having spent 24 hours in the ER, waiting for a bed, I can understand the urgency of the arguments, I just don't understand what they have to do with me (similar to my work environment). By the time I have the energy to raise my bed and join in the debate the maintenance guys move on. I keep being asked to sign papers that say the next procedure may kill me, a 1 in 100,000 chance, but it will only take seven minutes. Then I am asked, by the echocardiogram technician, to autograph Ken Follett's, _The Third Twin_. I'm willing, but she will not loan me a pen. She says she once did Mario Puzzo's heart. As I leave she asks to see what I am reading, Rabelais, _Gargantua and Pantagruel_ (I had already finished off Grisham's, _The Client_, several magazines, several newspapers, several made for television movies, and a biography of Trisha Yearwood). The technician reads the back cover, (c.1494-1553) Franciscan monk, and returns the book. I tell her it is humorous, and the Doctor smiles. ][<en Follett ][<en Follett