TheBanyanTree: About waiting rooms, bones and sewage, #2

[Tobie Shapiro]

April 30, 2000006


Dear Banyans,

	The events of Tuesday brought another letter to my could-be-a 
friend.  Indulge me.  Here is the letter:



April 26, 200000000006


Dear Elliot,

	Just thought I'd bother you again with details of my life 
with tsoris.  It's getting almost comical.  My mother is driving me 
around because I can't use the car yet, and picked me up yesterday at 
about 4:15 to get me to a 4:45 appointment with my physician.  We 
should have a look at this anklebone swollen thing, yes?  I wore my 
beeper just in case my kids needed to get hold of me.  I am beepable, 
Elliot.  I am always beepable.

	Just as my mother was parking the car in the lot, my beeper 
went off.  "This better be important," I thought.  My kids have 
beeped me to settle minor disputes, to ask where I think they 
misplaced a sweater, to tell me that we're out of milk.  I'd 
instructed Feyna not to beep me unless I was really needed.

	"Hello, Mom?  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but..."

	At that point, we all take a breath and hold it, don't we!"

	"...there's a flood in the basement.  It's disgusting.  It 
looks like a ceptic tank exploded.  It's all over the study room 
floor and both bathrooms.  The rug is drenched.  There's toilet paper 
and sewage everywhere.  What should I do?"

	I think that qualifies for an emergency, don't you?  I gave 
her the number of my dear friend, the plumber, a very nice guy. (an 
heirsuit guy, too.  I once saw him changing his shirt by the side of 
the road near our house (he owns this neighborhood), and the sun 
could barely make its way through the dense undergrowth.)  I had to 
leave Feyna in charge.  It would be good for her.  Who knows where 
that story would lead, how it would unfold?   Or seep, more like it.

	My mother and I proceeded to the doctor's office where I 
didn't have long to wait.  This was a doctor in the practice that I 
hadn't met before.  She turned out to be a good egg, highly 
intelligent, able to explain things, didn't talk down to me, 
animated, concerned, all those things that doctors should be.  Plus, 
she had the decency to wear a white lab coat so I could tell her from 
the peons.  She explained sprained ankles to me, and what I should do 
if the X-ray proved it was a sprain, not a fracture.  She wanted me 
to be in the know, so that when and if the phone call came, it 
wouldn't be just, "It's not broken.  Click."  While she was going 
through the typical healing cycle, my beeper went off again.  I told 
her I was being beeped, but that I would wait until later to answer 
it.  At the same time, her pager went off.  She was in the midst of 
demonstrating exercizes to do when the ankle had healed to the point 
that I was walking around well.  Here we were, having a conference 
and our retinue were beeping at each other.

	Feyna had succeeded in getting hold of MR. ROOTER, as 
recommended by our plumber friend.  MR. ROOTER would be over by six 
o'clock.

	MR. ROOTER arrived in the personage of a young man, maybe mid 
twenties, who looked sympathetic, even apologetic.  Yet, he was the 
one about to be lowered into a vat of raw sewage.  It seemed that the 
apology was owed him.  He scouted around and found the pipes that 
needed rooting.  What I was thinking was about the clean up.  I'm 
pretty much hobbled, and my kids are in no position to do major 
renovation on a sewage strewn basement.  We would need to call in 
some experts, lest the hardwood floors buckle, and the persian rug be 
destroyed.  Luckily, MR. ROOTER has a sister company that comes in 
and cleans up after such explosions.  They have to dry out the walls, 
clear the floors, clean the rug, do the whole nine yards, at great 
cost.  This is turning out to be an expensive week.

	As I speak to you now, I am in the basement, accompanied by 
four hot wind blowers and some air scrubbers that have been 
positioned by the sister company.  Can you imagine cleaning up after 
emergencies such as these for a living?  The guy told me that he 
spends a lot of his time mopping up dreck.  And he's only 24.  Well, 
I did my service in the dreck department.  Mother of twins who 
weren't housebroken until they were three.

	I have to leave to get Feyna to the courthouse.  This story continues.

	Yours,

	in dry gulch in the basement,

	Tobie


	And so it goes.  The sprain could be a fracture.  I am 
shuffling around with a drag step.  The crutches are helpful for 
distances, but a hindrance when negociating stairs.  It is much 
better.  I can inch along without the crutches inside the house, but 
going up and down stairs is a half an hour project, and I can't cook 
for my family.  I have actually started to drive the car, and use my 
right foot to depress and release the emergency brake.  Every once in 
a while, I forget what my situation is and I bend my ankle.  I have 
learned not to do that.

	I also have met with the nice Elliot man.  There were no 
sparks flying.  Ah well.

	And today, the clean up crew comes to collect the heat 
blowers and air scrubbers, and to whisk away their check for an 
obscene amount of clams.  But it would have been more obscene had I 
not done it this way.  I imagine the cost of repair when the hardwood 
floors buckled, and the walls got moldy.  Tens of thousands that I 
don't have.  This way it's only a couple of thousands that I don't 
have.

	I release you to your own cognizance.  Loving you all,

	Tobie
	limping but still upright
-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net