Doctors are tradespeople

A couple of years ago I finally realized that the medical profession actually has equivalents in industry and trade.  Would you ever expect anyone to make those equivalent connections unless they have undergone some types of procedures?

There are electricians, plumbers, and carpenters as well as artists in the medical profession.  You know them as heart surgeons, electrophysiologists, psychiatrists, orthopedists and plastic surgeons.  Heart surgeons unclog arteries much like plumbers by using devices they thread through the plumbing called arteries and veins.  When the original set of veins and arteries in your heart are clogged they, like your plumber who climbs under your kitchen sink to unclog a drain or perhaps to replace a leaky pipe, replace the pipes by graphting replacements onto the existing structure called the heart.

Sometimes the electrophysiologists will send in a probe to zap a bad electrical signal that is causing static in your heart's electrical system forcing your heart to beat erratically much like when an electronics technician will zap a bad spot on a circuit board in an electronic devise.

The orthopedists often act in your body in the same manner as does a furniture crafting carpenter.  These doctors splint bones to help the body repair after a bad break much as a furniture carpenter will make repair to a leg of a chair or table, often crafting some type of splint that can be hidden so there is extended use of the piece of furniture.  The orthopedists will also smooth out bone spurs using sanding methods as does a furniture carpenter when trying to smooth out a piece of wood to provide elegant furniture in a home or office.

Doctors also are designers and artists.  They rival the best of the interior decorators and architects who design homes and other structures.  Plastic surgeons cause beauty to come out of what may be seen as a raw or damaged canvass oftentimes reconstructing what has damaged a person due to accident or fires.

The real difference between doctors and those craftsmen/women in industry is their subject matter is as well as, the canvass, or part of the human's "house"(body).  This particular "house"is a living, breathing being that leaves very little room for error.  One slip of the heart surgeons knife and the wrong organ part is cut and the patient can bleed to death in front of the surgeon.  An electrophysiologist has to know the exact location that has a short and must know the amount of power to use to burn out the bad and to leave the good.  An orthopedist must perform inside a flexible structure that needs to retain flexibility when fully recovered.  When the plastic surgeon is done and the patient has healed the results are the biggest ad for the efforts.

Business cards

I've lived my life collecting business cards.  I hold them and put them with all the others I collect over our lives and one day...I went through them.

I want to clean my home and one of the things I've so far done is make a phone call to send a 27" CRT tv on its way onward.  That said I put two pieces of left over butcher block onto a old fashioned typewriter table to wheel it over to move the TV onto it so the 70 pound behemoth could be eventually taken away.  Making sure the pick up people will arrive when I am home and can greet them as the TV was so very heavy I could not safely onto the surface of the front stoop, It will be at least ten  days in the future.

Next I looked at the small box of those business cards I had collected over many years.  I picked out the expired drivers licenses and two photos of my kids, back when my son wore handdown western shirts and a straw cowboy hat, and when my daughter wore a huge smile for the camera.

All those cards had stories that belonged exclusively attached to them.  There was the card our neighbor who befriended my son had given me so I knew his name.  My son immediately called out the man's whole name confirming he recalled Lincoln and his friendship.  The surprising thing is that my son had a closed head injury after meeting this man and working along side him to lay turf.  Another card was from a now closed Italian restaurant we had visited in San Francisco after meeting one of the employees who was volunteering while my son was hospitalized.

There was the card from the Special Ed coordinator from a previous area where we lived, the card from the screen repair person, the card form a costume maker, from a childrens' entertainer, a structural engineer who gave an evaluation of the foundation of the condo we live in.  Various doctor's cards with appointment dates, minus the year, hand written on them were also there, several dentists including two from UCSF School of Prosthodontics, purchased cards from a local library with unpunched spots for buying prints from computer use.

There were even cards from real estate agents and bank employees who tried to help in my financial life.

Overall these cards are insights into my life history after my divorce, but before I left San Diego, California.