Excerpt
While Mom was in her bed in the hospital getting ready for her sternectomy, she had gone over her affairs to make certain that everything was in good shape in case anything happened during the procedure. That morning she and I talked about a lot of things, mostly very prosaic, but I knew that she was scared stiff.

As Mom was lying in her bed, dreading what was about to happen to her, Dr. Oakes bounced into her room and I thought he would spend his time with her, encouraging her and telling her that she would be fine.

When he arrived, her face lit up. Mom was so fond of Jim - he was so warm and caring with her. But, as I knew, Jim had some personal problems of his own. His wife,Lucia,was a local politician and ran for office periodically, which seemed to always throw him off-kilter. During her campaigns, he would get manic and very strung out. Now she was running for a statewide position and the election was the next day. Thus, it seemed that the last thing on his mind was Mom's operation. Instead, he blurted out, "Did you vote, Dorothy? Lucia really needs it!"

We both looked at him uncomprehending-
ly. How could his wife's election be more important to us than my mother's ordeal? And how could Jim be so absorbed in his own issues, forgetting that my mother had a very frightening surgery to face? Well, as I have constantly been writing in this book, Medicaland is like the Twilight Zone, made up of all kinds of people with very strange idiosyncrasies.