Training Log Archive: PG

One year anniversary. All systems are working amazingly well.

A review of my training in the year since then shows 349 hours of training, almost an hour a day (though some of it is a little bogus), all managed while sleeping 24.1 hours a day and weighing an average of 233.6 pounds. It's amazing what the body is capable of.... :-)

On a more serious note, when I had my initial consultation with the surgeon, and he is originally from East Germany, he picked up immediately on my last name (which happens rarely in this country but often in Europe), with the standard question if I was related to Yuri. No, I said, but then I said, Let me tell you a story.

And the story was from 1967, my brother and I took a trip to East Germany and Czechoslovakia, about a week in each. Leipzig, Dresden, some other places in East Germany, most of the time in Czechoslovakia in Prague. We were crossing the border into Czechoslovakia, the guard took our passports back into the small building, and then he came back a few minutes later and asked us to come with him.

Bear in mind that this was all behind the Iron Curtain, and there was always some concern about possible bad things that might happen if you just got unlucky.

So we followed the guard into the building, it was small, just an entry room and an office. In the office was his boss, holding our passports. Of all the possible scenarios playing out in my head, all bad, the one that actually happened never occurred to me --

"Excuse me," the boss said, "if it's not too much trouble, would it be possible to get your autographs?"

So I told this story to the surgeon, and we laughed.

And then we talked some about sports, because I knew he had been an Olympic-level decathlete.

And then we moved on to talk about what he might do about my prostate. But I had already accomplished most of what I wanted out of the meeting, which was to get him to remember me, to think of me as a specific individual and not just another faceless patient.

Because I'm pretty sure you get better care that way. I read something once that said that if a surgeon looked at a picture of his patient just before surgery, then s/he did a better job, somehow cared more, because there was more a sense of a real person on the table. I think there's some truth to that. And I think it's also true if you are at a much lower level in the medical hierarchy, like getting PT for example. Where, if they know you, you will also get better care. It certainly can't hurt to try.

Back roads in Leverett, reasonably hilly, seemed like hard work, also seemed cold, at least the last mile and a half into the wind.

This American Life about mind games. A little scary, have to be careful that jokes don't become at someone else's expense.

C • mind games 6