Over-the-Counter Rx - Books!
My best prescription for the New Era
Our regional hospital system sold out a few years ago, and during the adjustment period they weren’t taking my North Carolina Blue Cross medical insurance. I remember standing in the kitchen, hoping I could stay well for the next few months. It was like going to your bank to cash a check and finding a sign on the door, “Closed, Back Soon (Maybe)”.
Since that day in the kitchen, I’ve lost my primary care physician and have tried out at least five others. So I’ve concluded that primary care doctors are becoming obsolete. But you still have to see one so you can a referral to a specialist.
In my recent experience, a specialist is the only doctor that makes any sense now.
Twice in the past half year specialists have given me over-the-counter medications and/or advice to quickly remedy what a primary care doctor had given me antibiotics for in one case, and had misdiagnosed in another. And a primary care doctor sent me to the emergency room for something easily controlled by medication I’m already taking.
I know this sounds bizarre. But in thinking beyond what some medical professionals have told me, isn’t it true that we’re living in the age of misinformation, whether intentional or not?
In fact, the title of Universal Master of Misinformation is now being now fiercely fought over by the commercial retailors of AI vs. the political party that’s destroying America in order to be in charge of it (we know which one that is).
I heard on the radio that Artificial Intelligence has caused Amazon to limit the number of books you can self-publish on its site — to just three books a day! This alarm calls for a personal plan. Not that I self-publish anything; I’m more likely to give you a handmade book.
My personal plan is to virtually seal off my current book collection and label it Real Books (Pre-2023). Books coming in the house from now on will go to the Post-2023 shelf, not to be trusted.
Meanwhile, I’m reading library books. You might identify with this mental therapy. I think of it as an over-the-counter remedy, and one of my recently borrowed books confirmed this for me.
Women Who Read Are Dangerous is a book of comments on more than 70 artworks about women reading. The author introduces the last section of the book, “Little Escapes: Solitary Readers”, with these words:
In the twentieth century books became a mass-market product. Never before had books become so numerous and so inexpensive. Women are reading more now. They are searching for the answers to significant questions in life.
In all my reading about women artists, Gwen John has hovered in the background, with quiet courage. In Women Who Read the author comments on one of ten different paintings John made of the same subject, shown below.
The hesitant style in which this picture is painted suggests that the painter, like her subject, is in a state of exhaustion. The invalid needs an outside stimulus, but the intervention must be carried out within him- or herself.
In this way, reading works as a remedy that gives us back our intellectual power and strength of will when we are going through periods of exhaustion. Under the protection of reading we can be healed.
Thank you, Deda. I love this.
The reading of books is, indeed, the best prescription for our health. I appreciated your clever postcard title, Deda.