Thank You, Doctors

I took this photo in late June 2006 on my month-long solo camping trip up the coast and then inland to friend Araia's place in northeastern Washington state. I had gone berry picking with her friends. Afterward I took a walk through the orchard and felt as if I had entered a magical world of dappled light.

More than any lab test or clinical marker, this photo reveals the current state of my health.

It is as if I have been walking in a dark woods for a decade, struggling with one obstacle after another, and then all of a sudden, sunlight breaks through the branches and another, incredibly lovely world appears.

The path ahead is indistinct, but infused with a delicious magic, like the rain-soaked tree I beheld this afternoon--thousands of drops twinkling in a shaft of light, like Indra's net.

I have sent this message, via a handmade card with this photo, to my nephrologist, Dr. Michael Butman, closing with "Thank you so very much for all that you have done to make this opening possible. I am deeply grateful." And I will do the same for my cardiologist, Dr. Michael Phan. Both these men have shown great kindness and concern, and have spent extra time talking to me during office visits about my misgivings. When people bad-mouth Kaiser Permanente, they obviously have not experienced the quality care that these physicians have given me.