#717 – Piled up on the News Desk, Part IV – What a Difference a Year Makes

My apologies on not blogging much in the last couple weeks, I took a little break after the NBC Heads-Up Championship and last week was Hospital Week in the Craig household. Everything is fine and it was all routine stuff. In fact, to give you some perspective, even with two hospital visits in a week my life was way better than it was at this time last year. (And that’s even with a colonoscopy.)

Last year at this time, the highlight of my month was when a doctor I was visiting heard my name, asked me if I was an author, and said “I just got back from a vacation, and read The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King. It’s one of the best books I ever read.” This was a doctor that we were visiting because we thought our son Barry had testicular cancer. (He didn’t.)

In fact, during that visit, I apologized for not having brought Barry myself for the tests. This was because Jo Anne was completing chemotherapy, my mom’s husband David had just come out of surgery, and I was so debilitated by allergies that I briefly moved 150 miles away to work. And the reason I came back was because our daughter Ellie stole a car and ran away.

I started seeing a psychiatrist then, purely as a preventative measure. I felt okay, but it seemed like something SHOULD be wrong with me. After spending a year with the doctor, we decided I couldn’t afford to pay for the monthly visits and was therefore cured.

With that burden off my mind, we decided to spend our last session together – I had paid in advance – talking about NBC Heads-Up Champion Huckleberry Seed. I expressed the concern that I want to get to know Seed better, and probably have the chance, but I’m worried that he will interpret my interest in the folktales about him as a sign that I regard him as some kind of freak show.

According to my psychiatrist, that’s not my problem at all. After hearing me spend 55 minutes talking about Seed’s strip joint bet, marathon bet, cross-weights bet, Bicycle Club to Bellagio bet, tennis bet, basketball bet, and other bets, the good doctor convinced me that Huckleberry Seed doesn’t exist.

He is merely a figment of my imagination and I must be sublimating deep psychological problems to create such an unbelievable persona.  He recommended further additional therapy. I told him I would think about it, but I really won’t.

So, you can see, two hospital trips in one week is nothing compared to last year.

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