Limbodacious

It's Been a While Since I Did a Little Bitching and Name-Calling, No?

A Letter to the Various Employees of My Former Oncology Office

Dear Dr. McBitch,

Yes, I did tentatively nickname you Dr. Feisty in the beginning, but I see now that your feistiness was really just bitchiness masked by your extreme desire for a new patient.  I am gravely disturbed by your apathy regarding my health.   Did you notice that I missed two appointments?  Did you notice I went to the ER three times?  Did you notice that I had prescriptions for antibiotics called in?  Did you notice that I stopped taking maintenance therapy?

I hope that you didn't notice, because if you did and just didn't call me, you ought to be investigated.  At first I tried to defend you, telling myself, "I can't expect her to be like Dr. Wonderful."  But you know, I think I can expect you to be like him.  I think it's reasonable to expect that your doctor cares whether you live or die.  Call me crazy - oh wait, that's right, you did call me crazy once.

If you haven't guessed by the tone of this letter, you are not my doctor anymore.  But don't beat yourself up too much, it's not all your fault.  The people you hired have also driven me away.  Thanks for nothing, and I look forward to your bankruptcy.

Sincerely,
Eat Roast Beef

Dear Nurse, Whose Name I Can Only Assume Is "Unavailable at This Time,"

Only since I was 8 years old and writing letters to Santa have I attempted to correspond with such an illusive and mystical person.  I wonder sometimes if you do in fact exist, or at least if you ever have the time or the decency to call a very sick person back.  I know that I do not currently have active cancer, but I'd say I have enough problems to warrant at least a halfass acknowledgment on  your part.

I think this whole nursing shortage has given you a dangerously inflated view of your own importance.  Don't get me wrong, I'm the first person to praise nurses and their superiority even over the doctors they work for.  I'm talking about YOU.  You are a no-good, useless waste of a phone extension.  You are a haughty witch who should not even be able to call herself a nurse, since I have never actually witnessed you lift a finger to help any patient, ever.   I cannot believe you still have a job, and if I were you, I would thank my lucky stars that you haven't been fired yet instead of bitching about how much stress you have to deal with. 

Please do not respond to this letter.  Not that you would.

Sincerely,
Eat Roast Beef

Dear Receptionist, For Whom No Snarky Nickname Even Scratches the Surface of the Evil Contained in Your Black Heart,

First of all, get that sandwich out of your mouth.

Okay then.  Look around you.  That building you are in is called a "Doctor's Office."  The people who come in there are very sick and probably already a little upset about how things are going.  Your job, contrary to what you may have been told, is not to make them want to just get it over with and kill themselves, no matter how dramatically that would cut costs.

It's bad enough that you think you know more about my condition than I do.  It's bad enough that you either don't know how to work the phones or hang up on anyone with a problem you don't know how to deal with.  It's bad enough that when I told you the ER doctor thought I had an abscess, you tried to give me an appointment four weeks away.  But in addition, you insist upon being a spoiled, self-absorbed, lazy, rude cow.

A lot of the other patients probably just think you are stupid, but I can see through your dumb act.  You know exactly what you are doing.  You choose to make people feel bad about themselves, to frustrate them, to kick them when they are down, all so you can feel better about your empty life and hollow soul.  It's sad that you have to go all the way down to cancer patients to find someone worse off than you.

In closing, the only reason I haven't killed you is because a jury would never believe there is a person as pure evil as you.  You are the only person I would wish cancer upon.  The only thing you have ever said that I agree with is your terse closing on the phone... Buh-bye now.

Sincerely,
Eat Roast Beef

A Letter to Tarceva

Dear Tarceva,

Blow me.

Love, Rae

Dear Tarceva,

We have had a short and tumultuous relationship.  It's safe to say we're definitely out of that blissful "new" phase where you have excellent preliminary results and I am euphoric at the sight of your little blue roundness every morning.  However, all those little things that were cute in the beginning, like giving me rashes and radiation recall, have begun to grate on my nerves slowly but steadily. 

I know that you are busy trying to target specific proteins in my blood and all, but I just get the sense that you have put my needs on the back burner.  As you go sprinkling hideous blisters on my face, my numbers are creeping back up into the red zone.  In the beginning, we were right there on the same page, united in love against the cancer inside of me.  I thought you really wanted to keep me in remission, to make this work between us.  I though you were in it for the long haul.

But now just a few short months later, you have not only abandoned my needs, but committed the ultimate act of betrayal, bringing that tramp Shingles back into my life.  I know you're thinking, how could I have not read the writing on the wall?  I had shingles before and I didn't recognize the signs.  But you told me you would give me a rash, and I trusted that's all it was.  You must think I'm such a fool, but like I told one nurse, "You people told me the medicine would give me a rash so when I got a rash I thought it was from the medicine you said would give me a rash so give me a break already."

And so, I must end this.  I know you're upset, but don't feel bad.  There are dozens of chemos that have laid prostrate at my feet, defeated.  No one judges you for not holding out longer.  I can't say I'll miss you, my dear Tarceva, but I'll always remember you.

Fondly,

Rae

A Letter to Cancer

Dear Cancer,

Hello old friend.  I know it has been a while since we talked.  I can't help being angry with you.  I tried so hard to find someone or something to blame for what has happened over the past two years, I was mad at God for a while, then myself, then circumstance itself, but none of those worked out so I settled on you.  But I know that it isn't entirely your fault, you're just doing what nature programmed you to do, and I'm sorry.

As much as I try to hate you, I can't.  Because you are me.  I am you.  You are the twinge in my back when I wake up, you are the pain in my eyes when I am tired.  You are the face I see in the mirror before I put on my make up.  I try to live without you in my thoughts every moment, but I cannot.

Now you are just the shadow that follows my every step, but I know someday you will come back to me.  I know that someday you will look me in the eye as you choke the breath out of me.  But it is not that I fear.  What scares me is the mundane way you take my life little by little, day by day.  The way you have slowly drawn out the torture of robbing me of the joys in my life.  First my naivete, then my fertility, then my mobility, then... whatever you have planned next.

For so long I have tried so hard to prove that I am better than you, but at every turn I have been disappointed.  Defeated.  I acknowledge that I have lost the war.  I have taken a step forward, but you have catapulted me 5,000 steps back.  I admit that you are bigger and better and stronger and faster.  I say Uncle, Cancer. 

Having acquiesced to your will, I dare not ask for the big things I used to, please let me get married, please let me go back to college.  From now on, I will know my role and humbly beg for the table scraps of your mercy.  Please let me make it until Friday, please just allow me to hold out until lunchtime.

And so tonight, like every night, I ask that you let me wake up tomorrow morning.  I would be so grateful.

Love,

Rae

Since You Asked, and Goddamn Did a Lot of You Ask

My darling readers are nothing if not curious.

What is the meaning of "Eat Roast Beef", you ask?  Well, writing my letters with a pseudonym is my small way of honoring Don Novello, a.k.a. Father Guido Sarducci (Vatican gossip columnist), a.k.a. Lazlo Toth (Concerned letter-writing citizen), a.k.a Quite Possibly the Funniest Person on Earth, Ever.  Truly, any semblance of humor I now possess is a direct result of being tied down as an impressionable youth and forced to watch reruns of SCTV for weeks on end.  It wasn't until I was 15 that I realized there were, in fact, TV shows and films made after 1982.  Thanks, Dad.

In order to accurately explain the definition and origin of my nickname "Eat Roast Beef," I would have to divulge some very personal information, including my full name and my first-grade urinary habits.  So in other words, don't ask.  Sorry to keep you hanging.

But I will share this little nugget of knowledge with you.  Go buy Don Novello's "The Lazlo Letters."   It will probably only cost you like five bucks since it is so old, and I promise that you will pee your pants with laughter.  You can share the book with your friends without telling them I recommended it, so you can look uber-cool.  (And you will.)

So there you have it.  Now quit emailing me.  Well, about the nickname that is.

A Letter to Big Pharma

Dear Big Pharma,

I have been a loyal customer for a year and a half.  Because of the duration of my patronage and my extensive knowledge of your products, I feel that I am qualified to be your business advisor.  Plus, you asked me to contact you if I had any comments or suggestions.  And I do:

1.  I think that you should offer stock options to long-term customers, such as myself.  As a result of my treatment, I estimate you have raked in over $200,000.  And yet, I have not seen any of this profit.  It seems like I am getting the short end of the stick... twice.

2.  Do we really have to play the semantics game?  Why do your informational pamphlets still insist that side effects "may" occur?  We're all adults here.  Please change the wording to say, "Side effects that will definitely and without question be unleashed with all the fury of Hell upon your unsuspecting flesh include, but are not even close to limited to:"

3.  Ditch Lance Armstrong immediately.  Or at least add a disclaimer to the commercials in which he appears that says, "Individual is a freak of nature.  Results may vary."  It is very misleading to make people think they will be extraordinary athletes after their chemotherapy regimen.  I have trouble getting up a flight of stairs unassisted, let alone riding a bike 800,000 miles or dating Sheryl Crow. 

4.  Also ditch Mr. Squibb immediately.  Bristol-Myers was a good name for a large monopoly corporation, a very Old Money name.  People can trust a name like Bristol-Myers.  But then you merged with Squibb, and all your credibility went out the window.  He is shitting all over your classy reputation.  I recommend leaking a dubious memo he wrote a long time ago to the public, so you can look like heroes when you dissociate yourselves from him.   

5.  Please mandate that all bags and boxes containing chemotherapeutic drugs be marked with the skull-and-cross-bones symbol. 

6.  Axe the commercials that try to explain how your profits fund new research projects.  Do you really expect to make millions of dollars and be liked by the people who pay you?  Drugs will always be expensive.  People will always bitch about it. C'est la vie (which roughly translates to, "Get the fuck over yourselves and enjoy your money already").

7.  Stop making cisplatin this very instant.  I mean it.  Put down that test tube!

I am confident that the implementation of these changes will be beneficial for both you and your customers.  If you need me to attend your future board meetings, I am available and willing.  We'll be in touch.

Sincerely,

Eat Roast Beef

P.S.  If you see Sheryl Crow, tell her I think her hair is a modern masterpiece.

A Letter to Michael Crichton

Dear Michael Crichton, Creator and Executive Producer of "ER,"

First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your most savvy decision yet, hiring Goran Visnjic.  If there's one thing I like, it's a tall, dark, and complicated Eastern European hunk.  Yummm.

But the real reason I am writing is I would like to help your show.  I was recently watching reruns, and one scene specifically caught my attention.  Dr. Lewis had a patient who was coughing violently.  She put up a chest x-ray and explained to the patient that he had lung cancer, and he only had 6 months to live.

Since you are in TV, I will make a simple bulleted list of what is wrong here.

1.  An x-ray cannot show if a person has cancer.  It can show a growth or tumor of some indeterminate type, but only surgery and biopsy can reveal if the tumor is cancerous.  Even though cancer makes for better TV, the overwhelming majority of tumors, even those that pop up in popular cancer places like the lung, are benign.

2.  Doctors certainly do not hand out prognoses willy-nilly without a proper staging surgery and a pathology report.  Even then, a doctor would not (could not) precisely say exactly how long the patient has to live.  And they certainly cannot tell this information from an x-ray!

3.  Even if you could glean this information from an x-ray, a second-year ER resident couldn't do it.  Radiologists interpret x-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans, and everything else.  That's where they get that fancy name "Radiologist" from.

4.  Dr. Lewis sent that patient home with no consult from an oncologist, no surgery scheduled, no plans for treatment discussed.  Clearly, that is ridiculous.

And some other points...

5.  General surgeons do not perform brain surgery.  Or liver transplants.  Or tumor resections.  Or Cesaerian sections.  Or amputations.  You get the idea.

6.  Doctors do not bicker over patients like gangs in a turf war.  Everyone has their specialty, and they are too busy to go butting their noses into other people's cases.

7.  I don't care what city you're in, there are not seventeen major traumas every day in one hospital.  And they don't all require a thoracotomy.

8.  Medical personnel have been known to date outside their workplace.

That being said, I would be more than happy to offer my services as a medical consultant, since it is abundantly clear that you have no actual medical professionals on staff.  You wouldn't have to pay me as much as a doctor, certainly much less than you pay the people who pretend to be doctors.  I think you could really use my help.

I have enclosed my picture and home phone number.  Please pass them on to Mr. Visnjic the next time you see him. 

I look forward to doing business with you.

Sincerely,

Eat Roast Beef

A Letter to Garth Brooks

Dear Garth (if I may call you that),

I have always been a big fan of yours, but a problem has come up that I must discuss with you.  Your song, "Unanswered Prayers" is affecting my health, and I write you today to ask that you correct this mistake.

Now, I am glad for you that an unanswered prayer resulted in your blissful marriage.  But those of us not silly enough to pray for frivolous things like marrying our pre-teen boyfriend/girlfriend are being adversely affected by your lyrics.

When I pray, it is for things like my health improving, or for my friends to receive peace, cessation of pain, or whatever the individual situation requires.  Clearly you can see the difference between these prayers and praying for your youthful love to last.

The problem is, because your song gets so much airplay, God is just hearing you saying "God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers" without any counterpoint.  I think this has caused Him to get complacent up there because He thinks we don't want Him to answer prayers anymore.

Now, I know you are a business man, but you are already very rich, so I don't think taking one song out of circulation will hurt you too badly (plus I'm sure your accountant can find a way to write it off as a tax-deductible charitable contribution).  But for people like me, who keep praying only to have our valid supplications vetoed for what God thinks is our "best interest", the results of pulling this song would be innumerable.

I hate to make threats, but given what is at sake, I will pursue this legally if action is not taken.  Do not underestimate the gravity of this threat, if you and Warren G can have a years-long legal battle over the letter "G," I think I could get my day in court, too. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.  I have CC'd the person who wrote the song for you, because if this goes to court, he will be named as well.  Please, do not meet my demands because of the threats; think of all the people who pray for more important things than girlfriend troubles and lottery numbers.  Do it for them.

God Bless (and I mean it),

Eat Roast Beef

P.S.  Love the hat!