Dick Bolles' Hope & Faith Blog

Health Care, In The Days of House Calls

When I was five, instead of starting kindergarten,  I got pneumonia.    It was back in the days when there were no antibiotics,  so my body just had to tough it out.  It took some time; half a year, in fact.  I was in bed, at home, all that time  They wanted me to be watched 'round the clock, so a nurse had to be brought in, and they brought in a bed for her, which they put fifteen feet away from me, down against the wall where you came into the bedroom. I don't remember anything about her, except that she was always there whenever i woke up in the middle of the night; it was like having an angel watching over me.   And the other thing I remember is she always wore white shoes.  

I had two visitors every day without fail, around six o'clock.  One visitor was a family my parents knew; they dropped off ice cream for me, every night.  It was sweet and tasty, and soothed my perpetual sore throat.  The other nightly visitor was my doctor,  Dr. Leonard Nichol.  I never went to his office;  he always came to me. He was a doctor who made house calls, to heaven only knows how many people every evening. He was a wonderful soft-spoken man,  who carried a doctor's black bag with him. He examined my lungs and heart every night.    I liked him a lot.  I liked him for his caring, and I liked him for his dry sense of humor.  On one of his visits, we heard the sound of an airplane overhead.  He paused, looked at me with a twinkle in his eyes, and said, "Only way I'll ever be in a plane accident is if one falls on top of me."

I have no idea how my parents paid for all this.  We had no health insurance.  Dad made a miserable wage. We never owned a home. (We rented.)   We couldn't even afford a car. The way I figure it, the doctor had to be charging us virtually nothing for the house calls.  He came so faithfully, day in and day out,  for one reason and one reason only:  I was sick and he was a doctor.  That was his Calling.  

It's hardly any wonder that as an adult my life has been devoted to helping people find their Calling.  In fact, when I stop to think about it, that year when I was sick succeeded in defining all the themes of my adult life:  a woman's caring, a sense of angels watching over us, on being dependable day after day, plus the body's struggle to heal and grow.  (A real book title I have always loved: "The Body is the Hero".)   With all this, no wonder I went into the Ministry, straight out of college, instead of chemical engineering.   And yes,  I made house calls as a minister. Faithfully.  It felt good to pay back a little bit to the Universe for the kindness shown to me by Dr. Nichol.

Being sick at five years of age literallly changed my life. 

And, incidentally,  my heart still beats faster whenever I see white shoes. 

How to Live in An Enchanted World

I live in an enchanted world.  The secret can be summarized in one word:  Marci.   That is the name of the woman I loved and married, in 2004.   I cannot wait to get up, every morning,  at the prospect that I get to spend another day with her.  For she creates an enchanted world all around her.

Marci grew up in another country, and another culture.  She is exquisitely different from any one I have ever met in my life.  I ponder every day what makes her so delightful to live with.   So let me describe her character to you, but I won't say it's about her.  I'll say it's about us, or what we could be, since I beieve these are things she had to learn, and therefore these are things that we can learn, if we want to live a more enchanted life:

1. Prize Innocence.  We seem too often to prize worldliness, the person who has seen it all, done it all, and drained life of its wonder.  In an enchanted world, you prize innocence:  the people who have no cynicism, but believe the best of every person they meet.   Remember, when Jesus was asked who was the greatest in his kingdom,  he set a little child before them.   Keeping the little child in you alive is the kindest thing you can do for yourself. Believe, as children do, in an invisible world around us.   Filled not with dreadful dark and terrible things as the popular books and movies of our time would have it, but with invisible creatures of Virtue and Beauty, as the best of faith would have it.

2. Treat every day as the first day. Even with the partner you have lived with for ten thousand days and nights, treat each new day with them as though it were the first time you've ever seen them.  That means, tell them each day what you delight in, about them.  Never grow tired of saying "please" and "thank you" each time they do an act of kindness that makes your life better, on down to simple tasks like cooking and making the bed.  Hold them, touch them, hug them, and laugh with them each day, as a child would. You know the respect with which you treated them when the relationship was new; treat them with the same respect, on the ten thousandth day.  And expect the same in return.

3. Always be curious about the people you love or treasure. A scientist is walking by the seashore. Suddenly she sees a creature she has never seen before, in her life.  She decides she will not capture it, but simply spend some weeks studying it, to see just what it does:  how it survives, how it spends the day, what it eats, what its relationship is with other creatures, where it goes at night, how long it sleeps, etc.   In an enchanted world, you must approach each person,  and most particularly your partner, with this same curiosity. Day by day, you observe them, not judge them.   You try to find out the laws that govern their being, and their life.  Example: ¥ou are married to a writer.  The writer seems to take two weeks each time they need to write a piece, before they actually start writing. You note this, not try to change it.  You do not say to yourself,  "Oh, she's got writer's block, and I've got to get her over that."  You simply observe: "Oh, she takes two weeks before she gets going."  This observation never ends.  You are living with a creature you do not know. Do not lull yourself into thinking you do. This creature is constantly evolving, changing. You want to  know more about the laws that govern your partner's being this year.  Always, in an enchanted world, it's "Oh, this is who they are,"  not "Oh, I've got to change them."  But there is a paradox here:  often, by just studying who they are, you will help them change and grow without a word from you.

4. Go through Life determining to be fun to live with. You know, we have so many goals when we are in a long-term relationship, marriage or whatever:  to be forgiving, to be gracious, to be ioving, and kind.  We often forget the most essential goal, the one that creates an enchanted world:  that you be fun to live with.  Just that.  Nothing more.  It's not that hard. If you're puzzled, and you think it is hard,  recall someone you know who is loads of fun to be with.  Don't just try to fake being like them, but make a list of what makes them fun. That will give you something to work on.  Here are my hunches:  lots of laughter, showing an interest in you, immense playfulness that is also kind, having an optimism about people and things,  not brooding about things, looking forward rather than backward,  able to keep people entertained, and the creme de la creme, able to make occasional funny comments about things.  That you can cultivate in yourself.  But most of all the key is simply that you want to be fun, to live with.

5. Prize Beauty. An enchanted world is a beautiful world, above all.  To live in one,  put as much beauty into your daily life, as you can.  It's up to you to say what that means.  For some it is flowers.  For some it is music. For some it is nature.  For some it is art.  For some it is decoration of the place they live.  For some it is the way they dress, and the jewelry they wear.  For some, it is all of these things.  In an enchanted world, however, it is inner beauty radiating from the face and soul, that is the greatest beauty of all.

6. Lastly, an enchanted world is a place of endless gratitude. Nothing is taken for granted. Everything is offered and accepted only with gratitude.  Endlessly.  To and from your partner.  To and from your family.  To and from your friends. Strangers.  Everyone, including above all the one who created us.  In a world where it is considered the height of intelligence to criticize everything, it is enchanting to be thanked often.  It is enchanting to give thanks often.   Why settle for a dreary complaining existence when you could have an enchanted one?

Well, there it is: a description of Marci.  A description of you. A description of an enchanted life, where you just can't wait to get up each morning.

I wish each of you a more enchanted life.  Even if it's not named "Marci."

  

The Stomach

When I was 31,  I was so thin that if I turned sideways, people thought I'd left the room.  I was 6' 5" tall, but I weighed only 150 pounds.   Over the years this changed, dramatically.  Recently I weighed 276 pounds, and if I turned sideways, I looked like Alfred Hitchcock (for older readers), or  a sumo wrestler (for the younger crowd). I had, in effect, donned a perpetual backpack, with 125 pounds of stones in it.  And I was carrying it around with me, 24/7.

This summer, my beloved wife Marci and I took a long trip, by rented car, through the West.  August 15 - 24.  On the trip my stomach started to diminish, more than somewhat.  "What the......?"  I thought to myself.  "What was happening on this trip that was different than when we were back home?"  Suddenly I realized, "Milk."   I wasn't drinking any milk.  Sat down that night in Helena, Montana, and did some figuring.  I had been drinking an enormous amount of milk:  4 gallons of 1% per week.   In a year, that was 200 gallons.  A visual image popped into my mind:  a conveyor belt, with 200 gallon-bottles of milk, all to be consumed by me.   Yikes!

I realized the stuff tasted good, and made for strong bones, but clearly I was addicted to it.  I wondered, do they have the equivalent of an AA meeting for milk addicts?  "Hello, my name is Dick. I'm a milk-aholic.  I haven't had a drink since August 15th."

I dunno.  Anyway, I made up my own group.  Haven't touched the stuff since I woke up.   I've lost 16 pounds in three weeks,  and expect my weight to continue to go down.   

Ah, the benefits of kicking the stuff.  I can start fitting into clothes that had applied for unemployment.  My blood pressure, which was 210/110 not that long ago, is now down to 100/70.   My vanity, wounded every time I would look in the mirror, now is beginning to heal.  Things are really looking up.  And I'm no longer looking down.   At the stomach,  that used to be.