Tribute to Vin Scully – Part V

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Tying it all together

Leon’s son Charles was the first of two Culbersons drafted by the Giants.  An outfielder, he played in the minor leagues for five years, three in the Giants organization and two in Royals organization.  But he didn’t make it past Class AA and his last season was in 1988.  Two important things happened in the Culberson family in 1989.  Charles’ son, Charlie, was born on April 10.  Leon only had a short time to enjoy his grandson.  He died on September 17 at age 71.

Some might have found this to be an interesting story: the grandson of a major league player associated with a Series losing moment, getting some family redemption by hitting a pennant-clinching walk-off home run.  But what does this have to do with Vin Scully other than its connection with Vin’s last game broadcast at Dodger Stadium?

Vin Scully delivers the 2000 Fordham University commencement address

From a personal perspective, it might be said that Leon’s career ended in the Bronx about a year before Vin’s academic career ended in the same borough.  By the following year, Vin’s professional sports broadcasting career would start in the city and stadium where Leon spent most of his major league career patrolling the outfield.  And less than two years after Leon’s last major league game, while he was still playing in the minor leagues, Vin began his 67 year career as broadcaster for the Dodgers.

But from a historical perspective, there is so much more.  Simply from a baseball point of view, 1946 represented a changing of the guard in baseball.  It was the year that many players came back from World War II.  Some were able to pick up where they left off.  Some were better players than when they left.  But some found that in the years they were away, even if they were playing baseball frequently while in the military (and most were), their skills eroded during that time.  And of course there were a few who didn’t come back at all or who came back too severely injured to play the game again.

Meanwhile, there were young players waiting in the wings who had gotten an early taste of the major leagues, even as diluted as they had become during the war.  So there was a sifting process.  Some made it even with the stiffer competition and others did not.  And there were also players coming back from the war who had either not yet made the majors or barely had a taste of it before they were drafted or they enlisted.  Many of them played against established major league players and acquitted themselves well.  They were looking for their big chance.  So there was a sifting process.  There were still only 16 teams and only about 400 spots on the roster (plus a few extra on the injured list).  Some would make it and many would soon be disappointed.

Branch Rickey

And to add to the apparent oversupply, Branch Rickey and then Bill Veeck were bringing in even more players from a previously untapped source: the Negro Leagues.  Over the next 10-15 years, that would change the face of baseball and the face of America.

While the major leagues were not integrated in 1946, a few of the minor leagues had become integrated.  All the black players were on Dodger farm teams. There are few people who don’t know that Jackie Robinson signed a contract with the Dodgers late in 1945 and starred for the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers AAA team in the International League, in 1946. What is less known is that Rickey signed pitcher Roy Partlow to come along side Jackie. When Partlow didn’t pitch well, he signed pitcher John Wright.  While both were experienced Negro League pitchers, neither of them could handle the pressure and didn’t last the season. At the end of the year, Robinson was the only black player on the Montreal roster.

Rickey had also signed Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe to play in the Dodger organization.  Campy was ready for the majors and certainly would have starred with Montreal.  Newk was still rough around the edges and needed a little more time to develop.  Rickey wanted to integrate the Brooklyn Dodgers gradually, but he didn’t intend to start these two future stars at such a low level.  However, the highest level team in the Dodger organization that would take them was the brand-new Nashua team in the Class B New England League.  Ironically, blacks would play home games in 1946 for a team about 50 miles away from Boston, the home of the foot-dragging Red Sox owned by Tom Yawkey.

In addition, consider the fact that in 1946, the Cardinals had won their fourth pennant and third World Championship since Pearl Harbor was attacked.  They had to survive a best-of-three playoff with the Dodgers to win the NL pennant and the World Series.  For the first time in the modern era, two teams were tied at the end of the regular season.  They were two teams whose rosters in part were the result of Branch Rickey’s leadership.  And before the war started, they looked like they were on the verge of a lasting rivalry.  In 1941, the Dodgers were in first and the Cardinals second.  In 1942 when only a few players had gone into the military, the order reversed with both teams winning over 100 games.  Now it looked like the rivalry was resuming.  Instead, 1946 signaled the beginning of a change in the balance of power in the National League.  And it signaled the beginning of the end of a regrettable practice in major league baseball.

Through 1949, the Cardinals were contenders.  But other than Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial, their team had gotten old.  And they were not yet signing black players like the Dodgers were (and getting a head start over the rest of baseball in doing so).  From 1947 to 1963, the Dodgers finished first eight times and won three World Championships; they also finished tied for first twice and lost playoffs; they finished second three other times, one of which they were not eliminated until the final day of the season; they only had a losing record twice.  The Cardinals came up empty for that entire 17 year stretch.  Then for the next five years until divisional play started, the Cardinals won three pennants and two World Series, and the Dodgers won two pennants and one World Series.  By then we had already reached the expansion era and the free agent draft era.

Black players were also bringing a more aggressive game with them with more emphasis on speed.  Since the National League overall integrated faster, their game became more associated with stolen bases, taking the extra base and breaking up double plays.  And starting in 1950 and lasting for decades, the National League replaced the American League as the dominant team in the All-Star Game.

Roy Campanella

While Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and a couple more black players were on Dodger farm clubs in 1946, there was no iron-clad guarantee that they would make the major league roster in 1947 or any other year.  So many things could still go wrong, from poor performance to a violent outburst.

But as it turned out, the seventh game of the 1946 World Series was the last game played in segregated major leagues.  And only one more World Series (1950) was played without at least one black player included.  By the end of the 1950’s, every team was integrated, although a few like the Yankees, Phillies, Tigers and Red Sox dragged their feet getting there.  That’s the same Red Sox who were the Cardinals opponents in the 1946 Series.  They would be the last team to integrate their major league roster.

It is a matter of debate regarding how far some of the Cardinals (and a few players on other teams) were willing to go to strike in protest of Jackie Robinson being brought to the major by the Dodgers.  We do know that there were players on the Cardinals talking about it seriously.  After all, even a group of Dodgers were circulating a petition to keep Robinson off the team until Leo Durocher put an end to it.  We know that Slaughter, the person who scored the winning run of the 1946 World Series, was one of the ringleaders of the strike talk that came to light when the Cardinals arrived in Brooklyn for a three game series on May 6. And we know that at some point during the season, Slaughter spiked Robinson on the thigh when he hit a ground ball and was thrown out by a good margin.  We also know that Harry Walker who had the Series winning hit that drove in Slaughter, as well as his brother “Dixie” on the Dodgers were among the most vocal objectors to blacks in the major leagues.

White players had opportunities to play against black players from time to time in exhibition games, during barnstorming tours and in winter ball in Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Mexico.  In a few cases, they competed against each other on military teams.  So they knew how good the best black players were.  And yet many of them, such as Bob Feller, fed comments to the press that it was lack of ability that kept blacks out of the major league, not prejudice.  Feller also said that Robinson would not hit well in the majors and that he would have no problem getting out Jackie.  Bigoted baseball writers like Joe Williams seized upon these comments to decry blacks’ entry into the majors.

Jackie Robinson and Bob Feller being feted after the end of their playing days.

In delicious irony, Feller and Robinson would be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame together.  Jackie would be the National League Rookie of the Year in 1947 with a .297 batting average.  In 1949, he was the National League Most Valuable Player and batting champion while finishing second in runs batted in.  He also led the league in stolen bases those two seasons.  1949 was the first of six straight seasons of hitting over .300 and he hit .311 for his career.  Although he never hit more than 19 home runs in a season, he was such a great clutch hitter that in his prime, he was usually the Dodgers cleanup hitter.

Although Jackie Robinson died at the relatively young age of 53 in 1972, his wife, Rachel, has been one of the heritage faces of the Dodgers organization ever since then, along with Vin Scully.  The close relationship between Scully and the Robinsons goes back to Scully’s earliest days with the Dodgers, including the challenge Jackie posed to Vin to race on ice skates when the three of them were sent to Bear Mountain to do a promotion on behalf of the Dodgers. Jackie had never skated before, and the race never happened, but Jackie was serious.

Rachel Robinson

Rachel, a strong positive partner for Jackie throughout his career, going back to his season in Montreal, eventually became one of the best ambassadors of baseball as well as a respected part of the conscience for the game.  Their daughter and granddaughter are picking up the mantle.  They have been and continue to be reminders of a grievous part of the history of baseball and the United States in general, the sacrifice it took for a handful of courageous people to begin to overcome bigoted attitudes, the heritage of those playing now who would have been barred at one time, and the progress (and in some cases the lack thereof) that has been made since then.

For his part, Scully’s storytelling, including stories about Jackie Robinson, has made a major contribution to the oral history of baseball.  In addition, his skill in describing the action to the fans and newly initiated, his ability to convey the mood of the game with vocal inflection and keep things interesting without rooting or losing control of his emotions, maintaining his objectivity without attacking any of the participants involved: all these things have helped develop multiple generations of baseball fans in North America and beyond.  And he has been a positive influence and role model for many other broadcasters during his career, including his Spanish-speaking counterpart on the Dodger broadcasts, Jaime Jarrin.  With his voice preserved in countless ways on the Internet, I hope he will be an inspiration to many future broadcasters as well.

Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler

The baseball world of Leon Culberson and the seventh game of the 1946 World Series was, with a few minor league exceptions, a white-only world.  When the baseball owners voted after the end of that season, they voted 15-1 against Jackie Robinson being allowed to play in the major leagues.  It took the moral persistence of Branch Rickey (the only yes vote), the ability of Jackie Robinson to play at a superior level with grace under pressure, and the courage of Major League Baseball Commissioner Happy Chandler to defy that vote and integrate the major leagues for the first time since the 1880’s.

The baseball world of Charlie Culberson and Vin Scully in the final year of his career has made tremendous strides of inclusiveness based on talent.  Major league baseball has fielded players from every inhabited continent, including many star players from Latin America and the Orient.  There are currently 63 black players and managers in the Baseball Hall of Fame, 30 of whom had careers primarily in the former Negro Leagues.  There are currently 12 Latin American players in the Hall of Fame, many of them black (and therefore on more than one list).

Billy Bean

Although no major league player has come out as gay to the public during his career, two have come out after their careers.  Billy Bean was one of them.  Since 2014, he has served as MLB’s first Ambassador for Inclusion.

The racism of Enos Slaughter of the Cardinals and the Red Sox organization (and many others) eventually lost.  The walk off home run by Leon Culberson’s grandson Charlie that clinched the Dodgers 2016 pennant in the last home game announced by Scully connected the two ends of Vin’s career.  Hopefully it presages an even better future where people of every color, every nationality, every religion, every gender and every walk of life can feel welcome to participate in the glorious game of baseball without harassment, whether as player, administrator, owner, reporter or fan.

It seems to me that Vin, who developed a rooting interest in baseball for the underdog, is pleased to have seen and broadcast the growth in diversity in baseball over the past 67 years.  And if the most popular personality in Los Angeles Dodgers history is someone whose first rooting interest was the New York Giants (and still admits a soft spot in his heart for the Giants) can anyone doubt that miracles still happen?

The Los Angeles Dodgers celebrate their 2017 NLCS victory. Shortstop Charlie Culberson (#37), who went 3 for 5 in the game and batted .455 in the series in place of injured Corey Seager, joins the celebration on the left.

At a time when the reputation of so many celebrities, especially male celebrities, is crumbling before our very eyes, I still feel comfortable honoring Vin Scully.  I would love to meet Vin and Sandi Scully.  My mind floods with questions I could ask them, especially Vin.

Vin was correct that baseball continued without him for the most part in 2017, although there were still a few honors to send in his direction.  But he is wrong that he will soon be an afterthought in the minds of baseball fans, not only in Los Angeles but wherever talent and class are appreciated.

Who also honoured us with many honours; and when we departed, they laded us with such things as were necessary. – Acts 28:10

God bless,

Lois

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And Now For Something Completely Different … – Part IV

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answered prayer, AO Fox Hospital, Bala Cynwyd, balancing tasks, bathroom bills, blood test, cardiologist, curettage, Dr. Carolyn Wolf-Gould, Dr. Sherman Leis, early MTF transition, echocardiogram, EKG, estrogen, female, full schedule, Gender Reassignment Surgery, genital hair removal, genital size, God, God's will, GRS, identity, lab technician, MTF, multi-tasking, new technique, Oneonta NY, orchiectomy, painkiller, passing out, penile skin, personal gender, pubertal blockers, rename, sitting, standing, stress test, surgical risk, surgical technique, testicles, Transgender, undescended genitalia, urinalysis, urination, vaginoplasty

Fifty-four years later, prayers are answered

Sometimes God answers prayers with a yes.  He also has a couple of different ways of saying no.  One is, “No, I love you too much to give you that.”  Another is, “No, because I have something better in store for you.”

And then there’s the one most of us heard at some point in our childhood: “You’re too young now; maybe when you’re older.”  Of course, there is no maybe with the Lord.  He knows whether it will be a yes or a no.  But after all, we are His children.  And sometimes we do need to wait until we are older.

American girls – 1960’s style

I recognized my female identity when I was seven.  It didn’t become problematic until I was around age 10 or 11.  I was at that age that I started to pray that I would wake up with a girl’s body (an interesting prayer, since I still didn’t know what a naked girl’s body looked like).  And it was soon after that time that I renamed myself.  After all, if I trusted that God grants prayer requests, I needed to be prepared with a girl’s name to tell people.

Renaming wasn’t new to me.  By that age, I had heard the story of the younger sibling of a girl in my brother’s grammar school class.  When this sibling was born, the gender assigned at birth was female.  The child was given a female name and raised as a girl.  At some point in time before the sibling started school, the sibling started to complain about severe pains in the abdominal area.

When the doctors did their examination, it was found that this child was really a male who was born with genitalia that didn’t descend out of the body: therefore the female appearance at birth.  After surgery was performed to correct the problem, the child’s first name was masculinized and was now raised as a boy.  And by the time I was ten, I heard about this event.

(As a side note, some of the so-called “bathroom bills” aimed at restricting transgender people from using the bathroom that corresponds with their personal gender identity would require this person and others like him to use the women’s bathroom in public places.  Why?  Because his initial birth certificate identified him as female and that is one of the criteria in these bills for assigning the bathroom to use.  The result: a very masculine person in all other regards breaking the law if he uses the men’s bathroom in public.)

But back to my story: although the battle over dental insurance was ongoing, things had quieted down on the GRS front.  My hair removal was proceeding on schedule and by September, virtually all the dark hairs were removed.  I was ready for my pre-surgery visit with Dr. Sherman Leis on September 13, 2017.  This was where the rubber would truly meet the road.

One of the sobering parts of the meeting is the reading of the long list of possible risks of the surgery.  Some of them were minor and some were rare.  One or two risks were so rare that Dr. Leis said that he had never seen a case or heard of a case of it occurring.  Nevertheless, it was part of the list.  I was glad that death was not on the list.  I took a breath and signed a copy of the list that indicated that I had heard and received a copy.

One of the things that impressed me was that my surgeon stays current on technique.  If I understood him in terms of the time frame, he had learned a significantly new surgical technique compared to what he was using when I had seen him for the initial consult on 11/30/16.  Previously, after the orchiectomy (removal of the testicles), the remaining genitalia was completely removed.  To complete the vaginoplasty, the penile skin is sewn back in.  The surgical scar would roughly be in the shape of the letter “O”.

With the new technique, the remaining penile skin is not completely removed.  At the top of the genital area (i.e. the part furthest from the anus), the penile skin is left attached to the rest of the body.  Anything that needs to be done can be done from that position, but not as many nerves are detached and there continues to be a flow of blood into the penile skin at all times.  This new procedure reduces risk, such as risk of necrosis, and aids in healing the surgical area.  With this procedure, the surgical scar is roughly in the shape of the letter “U”.

Of course, I had some questions.  Someone in the transgender community asked me if Dr. Leis “scraped” (technical term: curettage) to remove any stray or gray hairs.  He said that he did not do so because penile skin is very thin and delicate and curettage tends to be harmful to it.  He would remove any stray and gray hairs with a needle (the only painless form of electrology, presuming the patient is totally knocked out on general anesthesia!).  He might have described it as a form of cauterization, but my memory may be less accurate on the term.

I also wanted to know why he hadn’t asked to examine my genital area.  Other trans women I had read about who either were post-op or were in the process had been examined to make sure they had sufficient depth without resorting to additional procedures.  Dr. Leis asked me I had a normal sex life and if my genitals had developed normally (i.e. not a micro penis or inhibited by using blockers from an early age).  When I responded in the affirmative, he told me that size would not be an issue.  (This can be an issue, however, for those who start their transition these days at a young age and go on pubertal blockers and then start on estrogen to block the effect of testosterone on their body.)

During the visit, we also discovered that I had a gap in coverage during the first two days after I left the hospital.  I could have sworn I was told that I would be in the hospital for five to seven days after the surgery.  It turns out that I was told (I found it later in my notes) that I would be released after three days.  I generally have a very good memory.  The only explanation I can think of is that I read about someone else going through GRS who was going to be released after 5-7 days (or who had that experience).

In some ways it didn’t matter.  None of the people who would be taking care of me for the 11-12 days after my release from the hospital were available for those two extra days.  (In the end the first person taking care of me rearranged her schedule, at a financial cost to her, to come a day earlier, so I was only basically on my own for one day.)  I tried a number of avenues, but another person could not be found who was willing and available to help.  More on my experience in a later post.

I left Bala Cynwyd with two scrips: one for a heavy-duty painkiller that could only be filled in PA.  I held onto that rather than carry around the painkillers for three weeks.  I would fill it the day before the surgery.  The other scrip was for medical tests: blood work, urinalysis and an EKG.

At this point, I was doing my best to balance my preparations for my GRS, my teeth issues and the needs of my clients.  Looking (unsuccessfully) for someone to cover the first two days after the hospital and the pre-op tests added two more items to my plate.

Model with glasses

Knowing that I was losing Medicaid soon, I also had my first eye exam in nearly three years and got new glasses.  I was following up to find out what happened to my school tax credit (STAR program).  I needed to sign up for a Medicare supplement program.  I was searching for an oral surgeon who had appointments available before I lost my dental insurance.  And I needed to keep track of the schedule of weaning myself off of various medications and supplements prior to GRS.

I went in for the blood and urine testing on September 21 (no appointment required) and scheduled the EKG for the following day.  It was almost too late.

The testing brought me back in contact with one of my favorite people at the local hospital a quarter mile from where I live.  In the past, I have had major problems with giving blood.  The first time was in April 1981 when New York required a blood test to get a marriage license.  It was not a big deal to me.  My dad gave blood regularly at work and it was a matter of fact thing and satisfying thing for him to help others in this way.

I went into the lab that day with my fiancé, had the blood taken, had the juice and the cookie, and then went outside with my fiancé.  We were talking about the rest of our day.  The next thing I knew, I was back inside, sitting down and feeling very woozy.  Without warning, I had crumpled onto the sidewalk, leaving my fiancé perplexed as to what to do next: run inside of help and leave me there or try to drag me inside.

So I knew I had a history of passing out by the time I had a blood test a few years ago when Dr. Carolyn Wolf-Gould became my primary physician.  Now blood work was a big deal to me.  Then I met the lab technician at the hospital.  On her office door, she had a child’s drawing of a vampire.  A woman who I would guess to be in her late 40’s or early 50’s (warning: I’m not very good at estimating ages), her hair was dyed blue, green and black.  It was so different that it helped put me at ease.  When I saw her pulling out one vial after another, I joked with her, asking if she was going to leave me with any blood.  She joked back, “A little.”  Still I warned her about my past problems and she took the blood with me lying down on a gurney.

That was the last time I needed the gurney.  Maybe my metabolism is slowing down.  Maybe it’s the effect of the estrogen.  (I was quite chagrined when I learned that young males are far more likely than women to pass out after giving blood.)  Maybe this technician has gotten me so relaxed that I no longer have a problem, even when she isn’t the one taking the blood.

So it was time for blood work again.  But first, my body was telling me to give the urine sample.  It was primed and ready, locked and loaded.  I went into the privacy of the bathroom and faced a decision.  Although I didn’t have to, ever since I knew it was likely that I would transition, I have sat down to urinate.  (The only exception was when I was still wearing men’s clothes and no stalls were available at the Penn Station men’s room.)  I knew it would be much more difficult to give the urine sample sitting down.  So (presumably) one final time in my life, I peed standing up.

It is also worth mentioning that in my head and heart, I knew that GRS was the right thing for me.  But was it God’s will for me?  Even if God does not have a problem with this surgery in general, that doesn’t necessarily mean it was right for me.  With these tests coming up and the surgery less than a month away, I went to the Lord and prayed that if I had been dull of hearing and ignored the Lord telling me not to go forward with the surgery, that He would intervene and do something to stop it.  And for a while, it looked like that might be the case.

My EKG – September 2017

The UA and blood work results came back and there was nothing in them to prevent the surgery.  The EKG was another matter.  I had never had or felt any problems with my heart.  No one in my immediate family has had heart problems.  I had one uncle on my mother’s side who suffered a heart attack, but no one else among my grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins that I knew of.  But the EKG came back with some irregular readings.  I would need an echocardiogram and a stress test before I could be cleared for surgery.

This created a new problem.  Time was growing short and we were also running into the Jewish holidays.  A stress test must be administered by a cardiologist and I didn’t have one.  And many of the doctors in my area are Jewish.  I couldn’t get the stress test done at my local hospital without first establishing a relationship with a cardiologist on staff or with residency privileges there.

Instead, I had to drive two and three quarter hours each way to the hospital upstate with which Dr. Carolyn is affiliated.  At 7 AM on a cold October 2 morning, watching the news coverage of the Las Vegas shooting, I waited to have my tests.  I drove up the afternoon before, not wanting to leave at 4 AM (or worse, oversleep and miss my appointment).  Fortunately I had some rewards points to lower the cost of the motel room.  Between the alarm and a wakeup call, I got up in plenty of time.  Instead of 165 minutes, it was a five minute drive.

I learned that I need to go back to the gym.  I was breathing heavy after the stress test, but that was in part because I couldn’t really get the hang of a treadmill. I never have.  But my recovery time was a lot faster than two men I had seen take the test before me.  I learned that I have some minor valve problems, yet nothing serious enough to prevent the surgery.  I took this as an indication that God had answered yes.  This was above and beyond the promises He makes to His people.  Even so, every good gift and every perfect gift comes from Him. (James 1:17)  But the extra tests and travel took one more day away from me as I finished up one more client’s tax return and tried to get final planning and packing done for the two weeks I would be away in Bala Cynwyd.

Finally, October 4 arrived.  It was time to do my last minute list checking and packing.  Mid-afternoon, I called Dr. Leis’s office to let them know I was just about to leave.  A short while later, I brought the last items to my car and began to drive to Bala Cynwyd for the third time.  After years of waiting, wondering and almost losing hope, surgery was T minus 17 hours and counting.  This was it.  This was really it.

For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. – 2^nd Corinthians 1:20

God bless,

Lois

Tribute to Vin Scully – Part IV

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1936 World Series, 1946 World Series, 7th Game, anecdotes, Babe Ruth, Bob Klinger, Bobby Doerr, Boston Red Sox, broadcaster, Brooklyn Dodgers, Bud Stewart, Charlie Culberson, Del Rice, Dom DiMaggio, Earl Johnson, Eddie Dyer, Enos Slaughter, Fordham, George "Catfish" Metkovich, Giants, Harry "The Cat" Brecheen, Harry "The Hat" Walker, homework, Joe Cronin, Joe Garagiola, Johnny Pesky, Leon Culberson, Los Angeles Dodgers, Marco Scutaro, Marty Marion, Murry Dickson, NL West Champions, pennant clincher, Pinky Higgins, Red Barber, Red Schoendienst, retirement, Rip Russell, Roy Partee, Rudy York, Sam Mele, Sandy Koufax, solo, St. Louis Cardinals, Stan Musial, storyteller, Ted Williams, Vin Scully, walk-off home run, Wally Moses, Whitey Kurowski

The Culbersons: Grandfather and Grandson

Vin Scully and one of the many times he waved hello and goodbye

Being a storyteller and the daughter of a storyteller (my mom), one of the things I enjoyed the most about listening to Vin Scully as his career progressed was his consummate ability to weave a story that fit the fabric of the game he was announcing.  And the fact that he continued to work Dodger games without the assistance of a color commentator meant that he could unfold his stories between pitches without them being stepped on by other announcers.  The pace of baseball also lends itself to storytelling.  One of the lessons Vin learned from Red Barber was to do his homework, gathering facts in the clubhouse, on the field or in the front office, facts that could be used (but never forced) at the appropriate time in the game.  In addition, with each passing year, Vin collected more and more anecdotes.  Plus the stories from his earliest days with the Dodgers could become fresh again.  And his curious mind began to research stories of general interest.  So whether it was the history of beards in response to the recent trend of players toward chin spinach, or the time he announced the first major league home run of one of his Fordham baseball teammates, or how he was at Ebbets Field the day Sandy Koufax tried out for the Dodgers and Vin thought Koufax would never make it because his tan looked like he spent more time at the beach than on a baseball field, the stories were marvelously spellbinding.

When Vin broadcast his last game in San Francisco, he was pretty much the whole story from a Dodger perspective.  While the Giants were still fighting for a wild card berth (which they clinched on the day of his last broadcast, to his joy since there is still a bit of Giants fan in him dating back to that day during the 1936 World Series when 8 year old Vin Scully became attached to the team that played a short distance from where he grew up in Washington Heights), the Dodgers were already in the playoffs.  They had clinched the West Division of the National League their previous Sunday, the last game that Vin would announce in front of his home team adoring fans.  And considering the emotion of the day and the way the Dodgers won with a walk off home run, it’s understandable that he either missed a story or felt it was too long and complicated to fit in at that juncture.  But there was something about the way the game ended that tied a bow on Vin’s career.  There was a connection to the history of the game and the Brooklyn Dodgers right around the time that Vin was a young college broadcaster and sportswriter at Fordham and the start of his professional career with the Dodgers.

Here’s how Vin called the hit that clinched the 2016 NL West pennant for the Dodgers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HayOXW09kl8

And with your indulgence, I’ll embellish it.

Charlie Culberson in 2016

I knew a little bit about Charlie Culberson when he hit the walk-off pennant clinching home run.  With all the injuries the Dodgers dealt with in 2016, he had been on a shuttle back and forth between L.A. and the Dodgers AAA farm team in Oklahoma City.  He unexpectedly made the team at the start of the season, and looked good in early limited action, going 4 for 9 in his first two starts.  But when players returned from injuries, he lost out on the numbers game and was sent down on May 18.  He was called up for three days in July but sent down again before another call up on August 23.  With the rosters expanded on September 1, he stayed with the Dodgers for the rest of the regular season.  He got the start at second base (one of four positions he would play for the Dodgers that year) in the Dodgers final home game of the season and he was already 2 for 4 on the day when he stepped to the plate in the bottom of the 10^th inning with two outs and no one on base.  Not only did he strike the pennant winning blow, he did it just moments ahead of the Giants losing to San Diego, meaning the Dodgers could boast that they clinched on their own merit, not because of a loss by the Giants.

But who was Charlie Culberson?  The Dodgers had signed him as a free agent in November 2015 after Charlie had elected that status after he spent the entire 2015 season on the disabled list or at the Rockies (the same team he beat on 9/25/16 to clinch the pennant) AAA farm team in Albuquerque.  Ironically, he began his career in the Giants organization, a first round draft pick in the June 2007 draft.  He finally made his way to the majors on May 13, 2012.  He went 1 for 4 in his major league debut, and played six games before being sent back to the minors.  He struggled at the plate, batting only .136.

On July 27, the Giants traded him to the Rockies for veteran infielder, Marco Scutaro.  While Scutaro played a key role in the Giants reaching and winning the World Series that year, mostly starting at second base, Charlie spent the rest of the season in the minors.  He spent the second half of the 2013 season with the Rockies and looked much improved, batting .293 in 99 at bats.  But seeing regular playing time the following season, his average dipped to .195 in 210 at bats.  With 2015 basically a lost season, Charlie wasn’t very prominent on anyone’s radar in September 2016.

Leon Culberson

But there was something else about Charlie.  His last name isn’t common.  But it is a name that’s important in baseball lore.  And when he hit that huge home run, I decided to check it out.  And it turns out that Charlie Culberson is a grandson of Leon Culberson who played in the major leagues from 1943 to 1948, mostly for the Red Sox and briefly for the Senators.

Leon saw plenty of playing time during the war years because he was found medically unfit for duty on numerous occasions because of a trick knee.  That knee would also occasionally put him on the bench.  But he still saw plenty of action in his first three seasons, batting .263 with 11 home runs, 100 RBI’s and 24 stolen bases in 253 games and 925 at bats.

With the veterans returning in 1946, Leon still made the major league roster.  But his playing time was limited to 59 games and 179 at bats.  Even so, he contributed handsomely to the Red Sox pennant winning season, their first pennant since 1918 and their subsequent selling of Babe Ruth to the Yankees on the day after Christmas in 1919 for $100,000.  He batted .313 as he started 36 games in the outfield and three at third base.  And that put him in the 1946 World Series where he got into five games, starting two in right field.  His home run and single in game 5 helped the Sox take a 3-2 lead in the Series.  He started again in game 6, and took an 0 for 4 collar as the Cardinals won at home to force a seventh game.

Leon was on the bench for the deciding game, Wally Moses given the start in right field.  Of course Ted Williams would be starting in left field and Dom DiMaggio in center.  And Leon was still there when the fateful 8^th inning began.  The Red Sox were trailing 3-1 and time was running out as the home town fans were anticipating their 3^rd World Championship in five years.

Manager Joe Cronin rolled the dice in that 8^th inning.  He sent up Rip Russell to bat for the catcher, Hal Wagner.  Russell hit a single to center to get things going.  As expected, Cronin then pinch hit for pitcher Joe Dobson, sending up George “Catfish” Metkovich.  Catfish smoked a double to left and Russell stopped at third base.  Rookie manager Eddie Dyer had seen enough of his starting pitcher, Murray Dickson.  He waved in Harry “The Cat” Brecheen from the bullpen.  Brecheen had already started and won two games, one a shutout.  But the little lefty was familiar with coming out of the bullpen and he was doing a good job of taming Boston bats in the Series.

Cronin let Moses bat and Brecheen promptly caught him looking at a third strike.  Johnny Pesky, a .335 hitter in the regular season and a .307 hitter for his career, hit a line drive, but Enos Slaughter caught it in left and the runners held.  That brought up Dom DiMaggio.  Dom didn’t hit home runs the way his brothers Joe and Vince did, but he could still stroke doubles and triples as well as singles and he had hit .316 in 1946.  Dom hit one all the way to the wall at Sportsman’s Park in right-center field.  The two runners on base scored easily and Dom thought he had an excellent chance for a triple.  But between first and second base, his hamstring muscle popped and he had to settle for a double.  Still the game was tied, the Red Sox were alive with a runner in scoring position and Ted Williams coming to the plate.  Culberson, the logical choice to replace DiMaggio in the field, was sent in to run for him.

Williams sent a foul tip back and it split the finger of rookie catcher, Joe Garagiola, a hometown hero who was one of the stars of the Series, batting .316.  In mere moments, one starting player for each team had to leave the game with an injury.  Del Rice, who had started two games behind the plate for the Cardinals in the Series, came into the game.

Williams had a disappointing Series, his only one, batting only .200 with 5 singles (plus 5 walks) as the shift employed against the dead pull hitter and the Cardinals pitchers stymied him time after time.  In the seventh game, Williams did hit the ball to all fields, but all three were caught in the outfield.  Still, the big guy might come through at any time.  However “The Cat” got the best of “The Splendid Splinter”, inducing him to hit a pop up to second baseman Red Schoendienst.

Culberson trotted out to center field for the bottom of the eighth, but the Red Sox had new life.  They also needed to bring in a new pitcher as they had batted for Joe Dobson in the top of the inning.  Cronin chose right-hander Bob Klinger over left-hander Earl Johnson to face the left-handed hitting Slaughter.  Klinger had been a starting pitcher with the Pirates from 1938-43 before going into the Navy.  But the Pirates released him early in 1946 and the Red Sox grabbed him.  They used him sparingly, but almost exclusively in relief and he responded well.  In 29 games, he was 3-2 with a 2.37 ERA.  He also let the American League with 9 saves, an unofficial category at the time when starting pitchers were expected to go the distance if they were pitching well.  However, it was the first time Cronin used him in the Series.  But many of the Cardinals would have been familiar with him from his time in the National League.

Slaughter immediately greeted Klinger with a single to center.  Dyer had third baseman Whitey Kurowski bunt to move Slaughter into scoring position.  But Whitey, usually a good bunter, popped it up back to Klinger for the first out.  That put Del Rice up to bat for the first time in the game and he flied out to Williams.  That brought up Harry “The Hat” Walker.  A lifetime .296 hitter who would bat .363 and win the NL batting title in 1947, he struggled during the 1946 regular season, hitting only .237.  But he found his hitting stroke during the World Series, batting .412 with 6 RBI’s.  His last hit and RBI proved to be the most important one of the Series.

Walker lined a pitch into left-center field.  Normally with two outs, the runner on first would go on contact, but Slaughter was running the moment the ball left Klinger’s hand.  Some say Dyer called a hit and run play; others that Slaughter took off on his own; Slaughter said that Dyer flashed him the sign to steal the base with the count 2 balls and one strike.

It’s been claimed by some that DiMaggio would have caught the ball.  I doubt he would have if he had been positioned where Culberson had been, playing Walker to pull in right-center field.  It’s been claimed by some that Culberson fielded the ball too casually and threw it in to shortstop Johnny Pesky the same way, expecting Slaughter to stop at third.  Indeed, third base coach Mike Gonzalez signaled him to stop at third.   But from video footage, it seems to me that Culberson went after the ball with speed, otherwise it would have gone past him in the left-center field alley.  He had a long run for the ball.  A right-handed thrower, he also had to backhand the ball and had no time to get into position to make a strong throw to the plate.  He did what he needed to do, get the ball back into the infield as quickly as he could.

And many claimed that Pesky held the ball before finally throwing to the plate.  But it seems to me that he held it for only the split second he needed to see where Slaughter was.  Slaughter, an outfielder, knew he could score based on how and where the ball was hit combined with the fact that he was running on the pitch.  Earlier in the Series, Gonzalez had stopped him at third when he thought he could score and Dyer gave him the green light to be more aggressive on the bases for the remainder of the Series.

If there was any fault of the fielders, it was that Pesky’s throw was up the third base line and substitute catcher Roy Partee had to come off the plate to field it.  Even if the throw was on the money, it would have been close but I think it would have been too late to catch Slaughter.  Anyway, you can judge for yourself.  People have argued the merits of this play for 70 years.  It delayed the Red Sox from winning a championship, something they had to wait for during 58 of those 70 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7IgTE593oA

Baseball lore is that Slaughter scored from first on a single.  Actually Walker was credited with a double on the play but many believed it would have been a single had there not been a play at the plate.  It’s just one more facet to one of the big moments in baseball history.

Remember that the Cardinals were still batting, leading the game 4-3 in the bottom of the eighth.  And the Red Sox would have their chance in the ninth.  Cronin ordered shortstop Marty Marion walked intentionally.  Then he finally brought in Earl Johnson.  He had pitched well in his previous two outings in the Series and was able to retire Brecheen on a ground ball to Bobby Doerr.

The Red Sox were not finished.  Rudy York led off with a single to left and Paul Campbell was sent in to run for him.  Bobby Doerr beat out an infield hit.  But Brecheen responded to the challenge.  He induced Pinky Higgins to ground one to third baseman Kurowski.  They got Doerr at second base, but that put the tying run on third base and winning run on first with still only one out.  But the Red Sox were at the bottom of their batting order.  Partee fouled out to Stan Musial at first.  Tom McBride, who ironically had been sent to the minors when Leon was called up to the Red Sox in 1943, was sent up to bat for Johnson.

McBride whistled one of Brecheen’s pitches up the middle.  It was a line drive when it passed Brecheen, hard enough that The Cat’s quick reflexes couldn’t flag it down.  It bounced by the time Schoendienst made a great play to get to the ball, but he didn’t field it cleanly.  However, he recovered quickly and was able to throw to the shortstop, Marion, just in time to nip Higgins for the World Series ending force play at second base.

Left to right, Pinky Higgins and Wally Moses; here opponents but teammates on the 1946 Red Sox

Here again, there was controversy.  Higgins was 37 years old, in his last season, and no longer a fast runner.  Why wasn’t a pinch runner inserted for him, many asked? The answer was that the Red Sox had already depleted their bench by this point in the game in order to tie the game and then threaten in the ninth.  DiMaggio’s injury added to that situation.  Otherwise they would have had a faster pinch runner available.  But when McBride was sent up to bat, the only position player left on the bench was infielder Don Gutteridge, another slow veteran nearing the end of his career.  And the remaining pitchers in the bullpen were mostly veterans not particularly experienced at running the bases.  The youngest was Mickey Harris at 29 and while he was a fair hitter that year, he still was not known as a baserunner.  For his entire career, he was exclusively a pitcher: never a pinch hitter or pinch runner.

There wasn’t much left to Leon’s major league career after the 1946 World Series.  He saw limited action with the Red Sox in 1947, mostly as a pinch hitter, as Williams and DiMaggio continued to hold down two of the outfield spots, and Moses shared right field duties with rookie Sam Mele.  Leon started three games at third base where the Red Sox started 8 different players during the season, but he was considered a defensive liability there.

At the end of the season, they traded Leon to the lowly Washington Senators.  He couldn’t even get much playing time with a terrible team, batting just .172 in 12 games and 29 at bats while getting 8 starts in center field.  In May, they traded him to the Yankees for Bud Stewart.  Stewart became a starting outfielder for Washington.  Leon was sent to the minors.  After the 1952 season he called it quits as an active player.

But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children; To such as keep his covenant, and to those that remember his commandments to do them. – Psalm 103:17-18

God bless,

Lois

And Now For Something Completely Different … – Part III

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65th birthday, appeal process, April deadline, bureaucracy, dentures, Derma-Lase, Dr, Dr. Carolyn Wolf-Gould, Dr. Sherman Leis, extensions, female swimsuit, full plate, Gender Reassignment Surgery, genital hair removal, GRS, health insurance, income tax preparation, Medicaid, Medicare, mouth infection, New York State, New York State of Health, NYU Plastic Surgery, oral surgery, Rachel Bluebond-Langner, Ramapo College, soft diet, tax clients, tax season, tooth problems, Transgender, victory, winning appeal

The Battles and the Progress Continues

The early winter months of 2017 brought the usual New York area snow and the onset of tax season.  Snow also postponed my first appointment with Joy Vanderberg for hair removal on March 14.  We were able to reschedule it for two days later.  Spring was just around the corner and snow days would soon be over.

My first visit with Joy also brought an excellent report.  She told me that I had much less genital hair than the other trans patients she had worked on.  She also told me that I had very little gray hair in that area.  I couldn’t have asked for better news.

Even so, she wanted to wait until my second visit before she gave me a time frame for how long it would take to clear me of my genital hair (excluding those sparse gray hairs that laser won’t touch).  And that delay, due to no fault on Joy’s part, led to another battle.

My second session with Joy was on March 27.  Based on my body’s reaction to the first session, she estimated that I could be cleared in 6 months, which would take me to sometime in August.  By this time, the wait list for Dr. Leis took us into September at the earliest.  Carole Sherman in Dr. Leis’s office tried for a date in September but it fell through.  So the earliest date we could come up with was October 5.  That wasn’t ideal for me as the recovery period would include and go past the due date for returns on extension.  But I accepted the date and would just have to make it work with my clients.  (I did, by the skin of my teeth.)

The scheduling wouldn’t prove to be that simple.  As we were in the process of finalizing the surgery date, Dr. Leis’s office was contacted.  Until this time, New York State was allowing Medicaid payments to be ported outside of the state for GRS because there were no qualified surgeons in New York State doing this surgery who also accepted Medicaid.  That situation had now changed.  Dr. Leis was told that he had received his last approval from New York Medicaid for a New York patient’s surgery.

Had I not had the bureaucratic gremlins’ snafu delayed approval for my consult; had not the troll delayed the start of my hair removal by at least three weeks; we would have put through a request for my surgery well in advance of the change in status between Dr. Leis and New York State.  Instead, we had just missed the cutoff.

Carole told me that she would submit a request for my surgery (and a pre-surgery visit with Dr. Leis on September 13) anyway, knowing it would be denied.  Then it would be up to me to appeal while she would work with my caseworker to see if an exception in my case could be pushed through.  As soon as the denial was received by me, I was told that I needed to respond immediately.

There was one big problem.  The denial came through promptly (amazing how the insurance carrier can move fast with denials but not approvals), right at my busiest time of tax season: the first two weeks of April.  And this was already shaping up as my worst tax season in my entire 29 years as a professional tax preparer.  New York had put through a requirement for taxpayers to include their driver’s license info on their tax returns (including an obscure document number that could be in different places depending upon when the license was issued, and was nearly invisible to the naked eye for the older licenses).  Despite me telling my clients this info in my year end tax letter, not one New York client brought me this information.  I had to put about a half dozen last minute New York clients on extension just for this reason alone.  In addition, I had a number of clients in California who work for a major Internet company who had a variety of unusual tax situations that added a lot of extra hours to my prep time.  I was also doing my best to maintain my commitment to a mentoring program for freshmen at a local high school.

And I had to spend time straightening up as best I could because my building management company had picked April 13 as the date for their new pest control company to inspect the apartments.  This was another thing that couldn’t have come at a worst time.  My life gets pretty basic at this time of year.  Dishes and garbage (mainly recycling and items to shred) pile up.  As many meals as possible are either sandwiches, pre-packaged meals or take out.

The bottom line is this: my clients come first, and especially at this time of year.  If I think that a client wastes my time by habitually coming in late without good reason, I have been known to fire a client.  But for the most part I love my clients, especially ones who have been with me for years.  So when one of my dearest octogenarian (and snowbird) clients calls me in early April to tell me that she broke her shoulder and was going to have surgery and didn’t know when she could see me, how could I get mad at her or deny her to meet with me for the first time on the morning of the day that taxes were due?

The main academic building at Ramapo College

I worked nearly non-stop on April 18^th to complete returns or file extensions.  Usually I file 10-12 extensions per year.  This year I filed 26.  There were 18 returns that I didn’t even start to work on until the due date.  Usually I work like crazy about three to five days before the due date so that by the due date, I only have one or two stragglers to finish.  I couldn’t get close to that this year.  I filed the last extension (my octogenarian snowbird) with 41 minutes to spare.  I had something to eat and watched an episode of Bonanza online to decompress.  And then I got a few hours of sleep before waking up in time to be part of a transgender panel to speak to a class at Ramapo College.

Even then, I had some tax duties to complete: specifically my payroll client and Canadian client who have returns due at the end of the month.  But somewhere during the end of April, I could finally start to work on the appeal.

Ah, but if it was only that simple.  Three appeal processes were offered.  So the first thing I needed was guidance on which one I should use.  I ruled out one, but what of the other two?  While waiting for the guidance, using my vast prior experience with bureaucratic language, I deciphered that it seemed best if my surgeon’s office filed the one appeal (which they did), while I went to work on the other process.

In my so-called spare time, I also had to deal with a problem caused by either the previous building manager for my co-op apartment building or the attorney they used.  When my name was changed, it took me two years to get the name changed on my stock certificate for ownership in the co-op that entitles me to live in my apartment.  When that was finally accomplished, I was told that they would contact my local town so I would not lose the school tax credit to which I was entitled.  Someone dropped that ball and as of January, I was paying more in monthly maintenance because the tax credit was gone.  To my local town, it looked like I had recently bought my apartment and had to apply all over again.  (As of the date of this writing, I have gotten my 2017 credit, but not my 2016 credit, which I soon have to follow up on.)

The other problem I had to deal with was more painful.  I was starting to have problems with my teeth.  Years ago, I had a post and crown put in.  That fell out, and other teeth were starting to break.  I’ll mention more about this in a future post, but this was one more major item to deal with.  I was getting a full plate and then some.  And there was a deadline on filing the appeal.

It also needs to be mentioned that I wasn’t just denied my surgery with Dr. Leis.  They did assign me to another surgeon: Dr. Rachel Bluebond-Langner at New York Langone Health/NYU Plastic Surgery Associates.  So it behooved me to check out what her procedures would be.  But I could get precious little over the phone and even though I have a good friend who was scheduled to have breast augmentation with her in early May and offered to find out information for me, I was running out of time for my appeal.  Besides, I was able to find out the most important piece of information.  This surgeon’s waiting list was already so long, with the earliest I could schedule a consult, the earliest I could have the surgery would be late spring or early summer of 2018.  It was bad enough that this was just one more delay after so many delays.  I would turn 65 before then.  (In fact, I was barely getting in under the wire with that important date with Dr. Leis.)  This would mean starting all over with new insurance, assuming that Dr. Bluebond-Langner and NYU accepted Medicare for GRS (not many places do).  This was a major game changer.  And I had other concerns as well, especially since I had so many unanswered questions.

So I gave high priority to my appeal, making sure that my two clients were taken care of by their respective deadlines (they were).  Except for the three part harmony, I detailed all the delays caused by my insurance carrier’s representatives in a way that rivaled Alice’s Restaurant.  I noted that I had already established a relationship with Dr. Leis and was in the process of finalizing a surgery date when NY State’s edict came down.  I noted ways in which the surgery process in NY was inferior service to what Dr. Leis offered, at least for me.

On April 29, I mailed out the appeal and sent copies via e-mail to Carole Sherman, my insurance carrier caseworker and Dr. Carolyn Wolf-Gould.  It was Dr. Carolyn who proved to be key to the way the process worked out.  And at some point as tax season was winding up, she encouraged me with the information that another patient in a similar situation and with Dr. Leis as surgeon had appealed and won.  She also suggested I get legal assistance, but I had already started working on my appeal at that point.  I trusted in my ability to deal with bureaucrats and didn’t need another delay to make contact and go over my case with the people she recommended (5 hours away from me up in Rochester).

On May 4, my insurance carrier signed for receipt of my appeal and I received the card in the mail indicating that on May 8.  I let my caseworker, Carole Sherman and Dr. Carolyn know so that they could take any further action on my behalf.

And on May 16, I was told by Carole: WE WON!!!!!!!  We had authorization for the surgery on October 5 and the pre-surgery visit on September 13.

In response to sharing this news, I received the following from Dr. Carolyn on May 17:

I spoke to the chief medical officer yesterday about your case. He agreed to look into your troubles. I have been having a lot of trouble wth [this particular insurance carrier] lately, and got lawyers from Legal Aid involved behind the scenes. I believe this is why your case was appealed. I asked him to look specifically at yours and one other yesterday and both went through this morning.

So much for my writing skills.  Well, I will at least take credit for choosing the right doctor!  It helps to know people in positions of influence in situations like this.  And this is why I always searched for people who were knowledgeable about transgender issues when it came to anything related, medical or counseling.  I appreciate those who pioneered and had to, in a sense, train the people who took care of them. Dr. Carolyn and Dr. Leis didn’t learn how to treat transgender patients in medical school (and there is still too little training in that area).  It took a determined transgender patient in both cases to get them started on the path they now embrace.

In a later note, Dr. Carolyn was gracious enough to share some of the credit with me:

You are very welcome, Lois. It’s people like you who make my job such a joy. I’m very pleased that both these cases went through today and also encouraged that [this particular insurance carrier] has now updated their policies.

This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t made a stink. You have changed things for the patients who will come after you.  This makes my job easier in the future. If not for your hard work on your appeal, this huge change in the system wouldn’t have happened. If you hadn’t filed all the paperwork, there would have been nothing to review and nothing for me to point at during my phone call yesterday.

It takes a team.

I am blessed and honored to have done my modest part of that team.

But perhaps there is some sort of conservation of insurance problems, just like there is conservation of mass and energy.  As of this writing, I have one relatively minor insurance situation unresolved, reimbursement for my travel and lodging related to the gender surgery, at least issues regarding my gender surgery.  But new issues cropped up regarding my teeth and my turning 65.

I will not spend a lot of time on these issues, as they are not directly related to my blog.  But they have complicated my life at a time when I need to recover from my GRS and need no complications.

Basically what happened is that I went to the dentist about my teeth at the end of April.  He didn’t like what he saw on my x-rays and had a more detailed scan done.  From that, he submitted a plan of extensive root canals and crowns.  Some dentist sitting behind a desk decided his plan was not warranted, because the teeth and gums were not in good enough condition.  So we went the opposite direction: pull all the teeth and put in dentures.  The dental desk jockey turned that down as well because six teeth could be saved.  They did cover the extractions of most of the teeth, but not the dentures and not the extractions of six teeth.  Despite dental coverage, it cost me $4500 dollars, most of which I have charged, but that eventually has to be paid off.

Then there was the matter of the timing of the extractions.  I am in the process of switching from Medicaid to Medicare plus a Medicare supplemental plan.  Oral surgery is part of my Medicaid coverage, but the oral surgeons in my area are only available a few days a month when they take Medicaid.  Therefore, they tend to be booked well in advance.

This created a second problem: when did I switch from Medicaid to Medicare?  I assumed it would be on my 65^th birthday, in mid-November.  Wrong!  Medicare started on the first day of November for me.  So Medicaid would end on the last day of October, right?  That’s what I was told by the Department of Social Services in my county, New York State of Health (the Obamacare marketplace in New York through which I had been applying for health insurance coverage) and my insurance carrier.

They were all wrong.  While I was in Pennsylvania recovering from my GRS, I received a notice that my Medicaid coverage will be terminating on the last day of November.  Had I received the correct information; had I known that before I left for Bala Cynwyd, I could have made different arrangements with my dentist and the oral surgeon.  I could have either postponed the surgery until November, or had the back teeth pulled in October and the front ones pulled in November and started with the dentures after the rest of the teeth were pulled.  The latter way would have been the preferred way as it allows the gums to heal better.

Instead, I came home from GRS recuperation on October 19, two weeks after my GRS surgery, and on October 20 I had all my teeth pulled.  By the 27^th, I couldn’t wear my dentures, the pain was so great.  A terrible post-operative infection devastated my gums, leaving large areas of exposed bone.  I had to take a week’s worth of a strong antibiotic plus do a 50% hydrogen peroxide rinse to combat the problem.  While the gums are growing back over the bones, I still have significant areas of exposed bone.  I will be without teeth until at least December 6 and on a soft food diet for all this time.

Oh well, at least my current diet might help me get in shape for my first swimsuit season without any fear of a bulge.  Still, while there is no definitive proof possible, my recovery from both surgeries was compromised because of the ignorance of bureaucrats.

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: – Hosea 4:6a

God bless,

Lois

Tribute to Vin Scully – Part III

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Vin Scully’s Incomparable Legacy

Vin Scully’s popularity in Los Angeles soon reached heights rarely achieved by anyone, let alone a sportscaster. While he protests that he is relatively unimportant and that the players are who matters, Dodger fans disagree.  By 1976, Dodger fans selected him as the most memorable personality in the history of the franchise, choosing him over star players like Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Maury Wills.  And he still had another 40 years ahead of him to grow his legendary status.

Kirk Gibson celebrates his 1988 World Series Game 1 limp off home run

I remember watching games when I was three and four years old, but I only have the faintest memory of Vin Scully at that time, even though he was already the Brooklyn Dodgers number one announcer at the tender age of 28.  Then the Dodgers departed for the West Coast and I had to be content to hear him when the Dodgers were in the World Series in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1966 and 1974.  Then, when the World Series used network announcers rather than home team announcers from 1977 to 1989 and alternated between NBC and ABC, I got to hear him in the even number years 1984, 1986 and 1988 when Vin was also NBC’s primary announcer for their Saturday Game of the Week.  As luck would have it, the Dodgers returned to the World Series in 1988 and Scully was at the mic when Kirk Gibson gimped into the batter’s box and hit the game-winning home run off of the A’s Dennis Eckersley to spark the Dodgers to a World Series victory in 5 games.

I also would have listened to Vin many times on a Saturday afternoon NBC Game of the Week from 1983 to 1989.  And I would have heard him announce the NL Championship Series in the odd numbered years during that time, as well as the All-Star Game in those same seasons.  But it was fitting that his final World Series broadcast on national television was a Dodger World Championship.   And I’m sure I put on the radio some of the time for the World Series from 1990-1997 (except for 1994 when the baseball strike cancelled the Series) when Vin moved over to CBS radio to call the games.

In recent years, I had one more series of opportunities to listen to Vin on the Internet.  I discovered that MLB.com broadcast highlights of the games, taking the feed from the local broadcasts unless the game was on national television.  As Vin’s retirement drew near, I listened more and more to get every last bit of him I could.  I’d also watch the interviews, the pre-game visits by representatives of opposing teams making their last visit to Los Angeles while he was still the Dodgers broadcaster and even the plethora of tapes of Vin from prior years, whether it was an historic call or just one of his best stories.

Over the years, Vin became known as a first rate story teller as well as the ability to coin a phrase or make an historic moment even more memorable.  Los Angeles fans learned this early on.  East coast fans, particularly those in New York, mocked L.A. fans lack of baseball knowledge when they started bringing transistor radios to Dodger games to listen to Vin describe the action on the field.  Nothing could be further from the truth as far as the fans baseball knowledge was concerned.  They had two franchises in the Pacific Coast League, a AAA level league that was given an “Open” classification from 1952-57, meaning that they were considered somewhere between AAA and the major leagues.  At one time, especially before airplane travel made teams on the west coast realistic, there was talk of making the entire PCL a third major league.  In fact, the league voted to become that in 1945, but met resistance from the two established major leagues.

In addition, due to the more moderate weather on the Pacific Coast, the PCL routinely had seasons of 170 to 200 games until the late 1950’s when the Dodgers and Giants arrived on the West Coast.  In 1905, the San Francisco Seals set a record of 230 games played.  Usually the season began in late February and ended as late as the beginning of December.  And some of the greatest players in baseball history were stars in the PCL.  Future members of the Hall of Fame who starred in the PCL include Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Tony Lazzeri, Paul Waner, Bobby Doerr, Earl Averill, Joe Gordon and Ernie Lombardi.  So L.A. fans were quite familiar with the ins and outs of baseball.

Los Angeles Dodgers first home game, April 18, 1958 at the cavernous Coliseum

The reason for the radios was the temporary home of the Dodgers from 1958-61, the Los Angeles Coliseum.  A huge stadium built for the 1932 Summer Olympics and suited for football and track and field, most of the seats were far from the action, nothing like the cozy setting of Gilmore Field (home of the Hollywood Stars from 1939-57 with seats 24 feet from first and third base and 34 feet from home plate), and L.A.’s Wrigley Field (home of the minor league Los Angeles Angels from 1925-57 and the major league Angels in their inaugural 1961 season and as cozy as its namesake in Chicago).

Dodger fans became so used to Scully’s voice while they watched home games, they continued the practice long after their team moved to spacious Dodger Stadium in 1962.  Soon after, I got my first transistor radio.  Many nights I would have that radio under my pillow, listening to Dodger games (preferably with an ear plug before it invariably broke).  Unfortunately, this meant listening to the announcers of the Dodger’s opponents as AM radio signals do not carry from Los Angeles to New York.  Of course, I easily picked up the games when the Mets played the Dodgers, but I also listened to the Pirates on KDKA, the Reds on WLW, the Cubs on WGN, the Cardinals on KMOX, the Braves (after they moved to Atlanta) on WSB and the Astros on WWL (their broadcast network station in New Orleans, the furthest I was able to DX a radio station).  At some point when the Phillies switched radio stations to one that wasn’t blocked by bleed from a NYC AM station, I listened to those games as well.  But occasionally, when the home announcer paused in his commentary, I could hear Vin’s voice from all the radios in the stands.  It created quite a challenge for the broadcast engineers to pick up the crowd noise without getting play by play to compete with the description of their own broadcast team.

Scully dared not milk his connection to the fans in the ballpark too often.  In fact the first time he tried it, he was scared to death that it would flop and leave egg on his face.  In 1963, an edict came down to strictly enforce the one second stop a pitcher was required to make in the set position with a runner on base.  Less than one second, a balk was to be called.  Not surprisingly, the early part of the 1963 season saw a sharp rise in the number of balks.  Scully, whose instincts for these things was unerring, procured a stopwatch and while another rhubarb was occurring on the field over a balk call, he instructed the crowd that when he said “one”, they were to wait exactly one second and say “two”.  The umpires and players on the field arguing were stunned when suddenly a typical Dodger Stadium crowd shouted out.  (They averaged over 31,000 per home game that season, a World Championship season for them.)  Another time, Scully delightfully surprised one of the umpires when he had the fans serenade him with “Happy Birthday” on his special day.

Sandy Koufax

Early in his career once he was the Dodgers number one announcer, Scully adopted the practice of instructing his engineer to record the ninth inning of a potential no-hitter so the pitcher, if successful, would have a memento of the event to enjoy for years to come.  He would always mention the date of the game.  With Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965, he added one more element, punctuating his play by play with the time of day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINiz0Bfb-0

Other classic calls by Scully include Gibson’s game winning home run in game one of the 1988 World Series, Hank Aaron’s home run that broke Babe Ruth’s career home run record and Bill Buckner’s error in game six of the 1986 World Series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4nwMDZYXTI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjqYThEVoSQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ujwjqIldwU

In addition to accolades from the fans and winning the Ford Frick Award which gives him a plaque in Baseball’s Hall of Fame, Vin has been honored with a lifetime Emmy award for sports broadcasting and was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1995.  He was named National Sportscaster of the Year three times and California Sportscaster of the Year 32 times, being inducted into the latter’s Hall of Fame.  He was also inducted into the American Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame and named by them as Sportscaster of the Century in 2000 and top sportscaster of all time in 2009.  He has also been inducted into the California Sports Hall of Fame and NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame.  The MLB Network named him the number one baseball broadcaster of all time.

Vin also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the press box at Dodger Stadium has been named for him, and streets in front of Dodger Stadium (including the official address of the stadium) and at their former Spring Training complex in Vero Beach have been named for him.  He was Grand Marshal for the 2014 Tournament of Roses Parade, was the 14^th recipient (only the second non-player after Rachel Robinson) of the baseball Commissioner’s Historic Achievement Award and was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom last November, the highest civilian award bestowed by the President of the United States.

Recently, Scully’s commentary for the last Brooklyn Dodgers-New York Giants game has been selected for preservation by the Library of Congress.  The first major league baseball game that I ever saw was the game the day before.  I saw the last game between the two teams in New York that the Dodgers won.  The Giants won the final game between the two teams in New York in September 1957.

Barber visits Scully in the broadcast booth before a World Series game at Dodger Stadium

As good as Red Barber was, it is reasonable to say that the protégé far surpassed his teacher, both in longevity and in tributes from peers and fans.  Indeed Barber seemed to get somewhat bitter toward the game in the later years, and also tended to disparage most broadcasters who stepped from the baseball diamond into the broadcast booth.  Vin was admired throughout baseball, and his farewell year was a series of tributes from players, managers and broadcasters from the Dodgers’ opponents when they made their last trip to Dodger Stadium or from the Giants when Vin did his last broadcast in San Francisco.  And Vin was highly appreciated by the umpires.  At some point, they began to salute Vin before the start of games that he worked.  Vin never second-guessed the umpires on a call, although he would accurately report when someone on the field took exception to what one of the men in blue ruled.  Vin took the position that the umpires wanted to get every call right and did their best to do so.

Vin was the first to acknowledge that fortune smiled on him throughout his career and that only God could have made it possible to do what he loved for 67 years.  This is not to say that Vin hasn’t experienced tragedy in his life.  Vin married in 1958, a very pretty young woman named Joan.  Their first child, Michael, was born a few years later, and two more children followed.  Joan died in January 1972 at age 35 of an accidental overdose of medicine that she was taking to get relief from bronchitis and a severe cold.  And Michael died in a helicopter crash at age 33 while inspecting oil pipelines for leaks immediately following the Northridge earthquake of January 1994.

No one can replace the people we’ve lost.  But Vin would find love again, a mother for his children, plus two stepchildren and one more child with his second wife.  And there was a bit of irony to it.  The Fordham Rams alumnus was visiting the offices of the Los Angeles Rams one day.  While there, he met the executive assistant to Rams owner, Carroll Rosenbloom.  She thought it was a chance meeting, that he was there for another purpose.  In fact, he was tipped off to her presence in the Rams front office and went specifically to meet her.

(Vin Scully’s Hall of Fame induction speech upon winning the Ford C. Frick Award in 1982: many times the video features a younger Sandi Scully.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3vvbUYj0Zs )

Transplanted to L.A. from North Carolina, Sandra Jean Schaefer (nee Hunt) and Vin started to date following that setup and were married in 1973.  A big baseball fan, she is also athletic and they share a love of golf and swimming.

Vin and his beautiful bride, Sandi

No longer would Koufax or Amoros be the most memorable Sandy in Vin’s life (even if she spells it with an “i”).  Sandi Scully has been by his side ever since, including many times while he was working a game and especially on the most memorable days at the end of his career, his final games as a broadcaster and the times he has been feted on and off the field.  44 years later, Sandi Scully is still a stunningly beautiful woman and her love for her husband (and his for her) shone through every moment.  Their blended family now boasts six children, sixteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD. – Proverbs 18:22

God bless,

Lois

And Now For Something Completely Different … – Part II

Tags

Bala Cynwyd, bikini, Blue Route, Brazilian, caseworker, complications, consult, Derma-Lase, Dr. Sherman Leis, electrologist, fee, full-time, Gender Reassignment Surgery, genital hair removal, GRS, healing, I-476, I-76, insurance carrier, Internet research, Joy Vanderberg, laser tech, LightPod Neo Laser, New Jersey Turnpike, online reviews, pain management, Pennsylvania Turnpike, post-operative recovery, psoriasis, recuperation, Schuylkill Expressway, trans-hostile, transiton, troll, vagina, win-win situation, Wonderland, YAG Laser

Moving Forward Despite the Next Battle

I was born in November and many of my life’s hallmark events happened during the October-November time frame.  It was in November 2012 that I put away my male clothing and started to present myself to the world as Lois 24-7-365.  So the delays in scheduling notwithstanding, there was something fitting to have my consult with Dr. Sherman Leis on November 30, 2016.

Map of Dr. Leis’s location

My mother told me that when she went to the hospital in labor with me, it was pouring rain.  And it was doing the same thing when I drove to and from Bala Cynwyd for my consult with Dr. Leis.  Making the trip that much more unpleasant, there were many trucks in the lanes of the New Jersey Turnpike that are reserved for cars.  The Simon & Garfunkel song talks about counting cars.  I had no desire to count trucks, especially all the ones splashing water on my windshield.

There are two ways to go from Rockland County to Bala Cynwyd: a lot of secondary roads but low tolls, or divided highways all the way with high tolls.  And no matter which way you choose, you will eventually deal with the Schuylkill Expressway (either with or without center city Philadelphia).  I love maps, but after exploring many possibilities, I reluctantly ended up with the high toll route.  Any other route would usually take much longer.  So off I went to the Garden State Parkway, New Jersey Turnpike and Pennsylvania Turnpike, before leaving the toll roads for I-476 (aka “The Blue Route”) to the Schuylkill (an aged highway disguised as Interstate 76).

Now I had planned on visiting some friends in eastern Pennsylvania on the way home.  I would spend some time with each one, including a night.  And then I got the notice: they would be repairing the elevator at this time.  I had no desire to lug a suitcase up three flights of stairs.  So I came straight home.

Carole Sherman

But the most important thing was the consult.  I had already met one of Dr. Leis’s staff members, Carole, via e-mail and phone.  So I already knew how helpful she was.  I would get to know Jenna over the coming months.  Competent people are usually confident and pleasant to deal with.  And Dr. Leis’s office staff runs a most efficient and effective office, not always easy when dealing with someone like me who will send wordy e-mails or be a chatterbox on the phone or in person.  Through it all, Carole and Jenna are confident and pleasant to deal with.

Furthermore, I believe a competent and pleasant staff reflects well on the person who hires them.  So between the recommendation of Dr. Leis I received from Dr. Carolyn Wolf-Gould and the favorable impression made by his staff, I already felt comfortable with the choice of surgeon before meeting Dr. Leis.

Dr. Sherman Leis

Meeting Dr. Leis face to face confirmed this favorable image.  I found him easy to talk with as he exuded a quiet, pleasant confidence in his abilities.  He answered my questions straight on with good eye contact.  I found out that his reputation for being a caring physician and man was what led to him entering the field of gender reassignment surgery: a trans man sought him out and persuaded him to consider this field at a time when it wasn’t easy to find surgeons willing and able to do this type of surgery.

Dr. Leis also explained that part of his philosophy was to avoid post-operative pain. This intrigued me because most of the trans women whose experiences I had read or heard about described significant post-operative pain, especially when they started to walk, sometime around day three.

What was very encouraging was that Dr. Leis described me as having an ideal profile for avoiding post-operative pain and complications from surgery.  I never smoked, I gave up drinking alcohol over thirty years earlier and was never more than an occasional social drinker, was not diabetic, had good blood pressure and a low BMI.

In other words as far as the last item, I was at a good weight and height ratio.  No one would ever describe me as being overweight.  I am making a special point of mentioning this because of the online reviews of Dr. Leis.  While most of them are positive, one or two cited him for telling them that they were overweight and needed to lose weight and they claimed they were not.  (One even claimed that he told a spouse, not a patient, that they needed to lose weight.)  These negative reviews were totally inconsistent with my experience with Dr. Leis and the type of person he is.

Related to post-operative pain was healing time.  He said that someone my age and in relatively good health would heal well from the surgery.  The healing may take a little longer than a younger person, but no reason why I wouldn’t heal.

An apartment like the one where I recuperated from surgery after release from the hospital

We discussed his options for recovery after the release from the hospital.  Normally, the GRS patient is able to go home two weeks after surgery.  Dr. Leis has a few rooms at his facility, some private and some semi-private.  He will also see patients after surgery at two nearby hotels.   Neither hotel was part of my rewards plan, so I indicated my preference to stay at his facility.  I later found out that this is his preference as well, as it makes it easier to check on his patients’ progress during recovery.

I found out that Dr. Leis accepted laser as a method of removing the hair in the surgical area, which was a relief as that is the method I had been using.  And I got information on the area which needed to be cleared of hair.

Finally, he answered a question that concerned me and Dr. Carolyn.  He told me that he didn’t see any significant problems because of my psoriasis.  That was also reassuring because I didn’t want to go on medications to treat psoriasis, all of which basically compromise the immune system, leading into major surgery.

With the consultation concluded, I went out to talk logistics with Carole.  The earliest I could have the surgery, based on Dr. Leis’s schedule and where I planned on staying, would be June.  But it was too early to schedule anything hard and fast yet.  I had other ducks to line up.  And I needed to know how long it would take to give me good clearance of the hair in the genital area.

All in all, I headed home through the pouring rain and late autumn early darkness feeling very relieved.  What I spent most of my life thinking would never happen was now one major step closer to reality.  But it would turn out that a lot of other major steps would be needed.  I was not finished with Wonderland by any stretch of the imagination.

The first step was to arrange and begin genital hair removal.  I had to approach that two ways.  One was to find out how to get approval for this step.  That took a few weeks to find out.  One of the advantages of my insurance carrier over the others I could have chosen was the assignment of an individual caseworker to me.  With the others, you dial in to customer service and take your chances.

Even so, my caseworker is generally swamped with work servicing her client load.  In addition, around this time she had some medical issues to deal with.  During that winter, she would be out for at least a month because of medical problems, leaving her case load (and my situation) to another caseworker who was doing her best to fill in.

The other step I had to take was to approach my laser tech for hair removal.  I needed a little time to think of how I was going to approach her.  Joy Vanderberg is excellent at her craft.  She is a trained electrologist, but switched to exclusive use of laser once high end lasers were developed which had both a greater degree of effectiveness and could also distinguish between the melanin in the skin and the melanin in the hair.  (It is melanin that the laser seeks to target its pulse.)  She acquired such a laser and donated her electrology equipment to a school.

http://www.derma-lase.com/

Joy Vanderberg and part of her equipment

Joy can tell you the characteristics of the different types of lasers.  She can also tell you just about everything you’d want to know about hair (e.g. the difference between facial hair and eyebrow hair).  She also had performed genital hair removal on other trans women.  So I felt very confident continuing to place myself in her hands.

But I also had a concern.  In the past she categorically stated that she did not take insurance to cover her fees.  So I felt the need to appeal to her sympathetic side somehow to make an exception in my case.

I need not have worried.  When she was telling me that she didn’t take insurance, it was because she hadn’t looked into it.  One reason was that until recently, insurance didn’t even cover it.  But when I approached her on the topic, she immediately got on board.  She did not want me going to a stranger, perhaps someone not familiar with a transgender client, especially for such an intimate area of the body.  We would go on a journey together so she could find out how she could be eligible for reimbursement.  Starting on the day after Christmas 2016, Joy and I took this section of the journey through Wonderland together.  There were times when it worked well and times when she swore she would never deal with insurance again.  (In fact at this point, she is unlikely to take insurance again: a pity and the blame to be laid totally at the feet of the insurance system.)  But she stuck by me to the very last session before my surgery and did her usual excellent job.

Genital hair removal is an important step in the process.  One does not want hair growing inside of the vagina.  And from a procedural point of view, I needed to begin this step ASAP because I needed her to give me a ballpark estimate of how long it would take to clear me of my genital hair.  There was no sense in scheduling a surgery date until she could give me a reasonable time estimate.  She couldn’t do that until I was in front of her and she could examine the area.  And she wouldn’t do that until the insurance was arranged and a fee was agreed upon.  And this proved easier said than done.

Joy jumped through all the hoops and then some to be an eligible provider who could be reimbursed for her services by insurance.  And then we ran into a troll at my insurance carrier.  That’s the most accurate and kindest term I can use to describe him.  I didn’t deal with him directly, but Joy did and she forwarded me their e-mail correspondence.  She also clued me in on their phone conversations.

Basically, he tried to low ball the amount of reimbursement he was offering her.  Now I believe in saving the taxpayers money when possible.  That fits in with my general philosophy of government.  So I asked Joy if this man was a misguided bean counter, trying to save money or something far worse.  Joy told me that based on phone conversations she had with him, he thought that people like me (i.e. transgender people) are disgusting.  And in the end, Joy did accept a rate of reimbursement lower than her usual fees, but not when dealing with the troll.

What he tried to do was justify a ridiculously low rate and claim it was based on what he could pay through use of Groupon (which would never cover all of the sessions needed to clear my genital hair).  When he was called on that, he claimed he surveyed list of hair removal providers in my area.

By now it was tax season and the conversations between Joy and the troll occurred on a day when I was out on a group of tax appointments.  When I got home, my phone and e-mail was lit up with frantic messages from Joy.  Her concern was for me.  She wouldn’t work for the rate he was offering, so she knew that either I would have to pay the difference or go to whatever stranger this guy found.

I got off the phone with Joy and I was downcast.  After how long I had waited to get this close to surgery and hair removal was going to blow it out of the water?  It took me twenty minutes to snap out of the funk.

Years earlier when I worked for a local housing authority, I did rent surveys and fuel cost surveys over the phone as part of my job.  By now, I was an experienced Internet researcher.  Verifying his claims that he had found providers who would go that low would be easy.  He had sent Joy his list of providers that he supposedly researched.  He had gotten it from Google Maps.  And every provider’s listing included their website.

Two hours later, I had the real information: a comprehensive list of what each provider offered and how much they charged (if they put their prices online; some did not).  No one stated that they provided services for transgender clients and none advertised genital hair removal for someone with male genitalia.  Based on the information that Joy gave me, I had to use either bikini or Brazilian prices for comparison purposes.  The lowest price I found was five times what the troll was offering Joy, and that price was a sale price that would expire before my sessions would be completed.  A more typical price was ten to fifteen times what he was offering.  And at least one provider charged fifty percent more per session for male clients compared to female clients for the same service (e.g. removing hair on one’s forearm).  Just because years of estrogen had softened my hair, don’t think that someone unfamiliar with me wouldn’t have charged me the male price level.

And then there were the places I immediately disqualified because they were using inferior lasers.  Often they were spas, not primarily hair removal providers.  Their hair removal might be limited to upper lip peach fuzz during a “day of beauty” spa treatment or temporary removal for beach season.

The troll had given Joy an ultimatum with his last communication: accept his offer or he would assign me to someone else.  He gave her one day.  So I put all this information together into report form and e-mailed my insurance caseworker with an urgent subject line, explaining to her what had happened and that we had little time to work with.  And then I waited.  Health Insurance Wonderland tends to be filled with waiting periods punctuated by messages of bad news.

After a couple of weeks of waiting and checking with Joy, I suddenly remembered: the troll had threatened to assign me to someone else in 24 hours.  That time period had come and gone two weeks ago.  So I contacted my caseworker, explaining where we were at this point in the process, asking what happened and also asking how I could file a complaint against the troll.

The caseworker apologized that no one had gotten back to Joy to negotiate a price.  But she told me that every supervisor in that area of the insurance carrier was familiar with my case by now.  Apparently I had made some waves and did an excellent job presenting my case.  As for the complaint, she told me I could go ahead with it if I wanted to and that she could not tell me the circumstances about how this happened, but that the troll was no longer working for their organization.  So I don’t know if he quit when he saw he couldn’t cause problems for trans people or was fired.  But there was little reason for the complaint.

Within 24 hours, someone new contacted Joy, apologizing profusely.  In the end, Joy did accept a rate of reimbursement lower than her usual fees, but one she could live with.  It was a win all around.  The government saved money, Joy had additional income and I had a hair removal provider I knew and trusted.  And she did a good job: the day before my surgery, my surgeon confirmed it.

Little did I know, I would have more battles ahead.  And their timing couldn’t have been much worse.

Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man. – Luke 21:36

God bless,

Lois

Tribute to Vin Scully – Part II

Tags

1953 World Series, Al Helfer, baseball, baseball broadcasts, Baseball Hall of Fame, big brother, Boston, Boston University, Branch Rickey, Brooklyn Dodgers, Brooklyn Trust Company, CBS, Cliff Dapper, College Football, Connie Desmond, Dodger fan, Ebbets Field, Ernie Harwell, family, father figure, Fenway Park, Ford Frick, Gillette, horrendous conditions, Jerry Doggett, Larry MacPhail, Los Angeles, Madison Square Garden, Mel Allen, National League, NBC, New York Rangers, Red Barber, Ridgewood NY, taskmaster, University of Maryland, Vin Scully, Walter O'Malley, WOR-AM, X-Files, Youngstown Ohio

My family: fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Red Barber

Marquee from the third Madison Square Garden (1925-1968)

To trace my love affair with the Dodgers and my admiration for Vin Scully, it goes back to July 15, 1910 when my dad was born in the Ridgewood neighborhood of New York City on the Brooklyn-Queens border.  My dad contracted polio when he was four years old and it prevented the muscle in his left calf from properly developing.  So he was never an athlete, although he loved to fish and occasionally go hunting.  But he knew his sports and he talked about going to different sporting events in his younger days such as watching the New York Rangers play hockey in their early years.  He took my brother and me to our first Dodger games before they left for California and our first hockey game to watch the Rangers play the Red Wings in Madison Square Garden (the one between 49^th and 50^th Streets) in the early 60’s.  And it was natural that he would be a Dodger fan based on where he lived from the day he was born to the day the Dodgers left town.

When we were younger, my dad would play catch with us.  And one of my memories is when we bought a sheet of plywood to become a basketball backboard, tied it to the car, got on the Thruway and had to reach out the window to hold it down until we could get off at the next exit and travel at a slower, safer speed.  My brother and I would always have a supply of sports equipment at our disposal.

In the early 1930’s my mom moved to NYC from Ohio with her mother.  She also was no athlete.  But she loved to dance and she loved watching the boys play baseball in the neighborhood parks.  And based on her pictures as a young woman, I know they enjoyed watching her, too.  But the boys of Youngstown’s loss was my dad’s gain.  After a few years of courting, my parents married in September 1937.  It was a marriage that lasted until my dad died in March 2002.  As fate would have it, the marriage began at one of the biggest turning points in Dodger history.

While the Dodgers’ crosstown rivals, the Giants and Yankees would be going to their second straight World Series, the Dodgers not only limped home to one of their typical 6^th places finishes (ahead of Philadelphia and Cincinnati), they were close to going out of business.  Bill collectors waited in the team’s office to get paid.  They couldn’t call: the phones had been shut off for non-payment.

Larry MacPhail

The Dodger owners had been squabbling, which was part of the team’s problem. Finally in desperation, they asked NL President Ford Frick in early 1938 what he thought they should do.  Frick suggested they hire a strong general manager, someone who could rebuild the team.  When they asked Frick for a name, Frick asked Branch Rickey for a suggestion on who could turn the team around.  Rickey gave them the name of Larry MacPhail who had begun to turn the Cincinnati Reds around (even though they finished last in 1937, the team MacPhail started to build won the NL Pennant in 1939 and 1940) until he had a falling out with Reds’ owner Powell Crosley.

MacPhail took the job only when given the assurance that he would have the money necessary to rebuild the team.  Even though the Dodgers were deep in debt at the time, the Brooklyn Trust Company (already heavily involved financially with the team) gave the assurance to MacPhail and team owners.  Whether it was due to MacPhail’s reputation as a shrewd baseball man, his family’s wealth or sheer desperation to recoup their investment, MacPhail now had working capital.  Before he left the team at the end of the 1942 season, what had been the financially weakest team in baseball was now on solid footing and with a solid team that only needed to wait until the end of World War II to dominate the National League for the next decade.

Ebbets Field

MacPhail did three things to make the Dodgers a respectable contending team.  He fixed up Ebbets Field to make it a comfortable experience for the fans, and also installed lights for night baseball, just as he had done in Cincinnati.  His eye for talent and bargains enabled him to build a competitive veteran team from carefully chosen castoffs like Dixie Walker, Hugh Casey and Whitlow Wyatt and acquire others like Dolph Camilli, Billy Herman, Mickey Owen, Pee Wee Reese and Kirby Higbe from teams looking to unload them for one reason or another.  Meanwhile, he hired scouts and bought minor league teams to obtain one talented potential major league regular.  A future Dodger star who came to the Dodgers with the rest of his minor league team was Carl Furillo.  And to promote the team, he ignored the agreement the three NYC teams had made to not broadcast their games on radio.  He didn’t have enough time to do that for his first season in Brooklyn.  But he negotiated with General Mills to sponsor the broadcasts and entered into an agreement with 50,000 watt station WOR to air the games.  By the start of the 1939 season, he was ready to go.  To complete the process, he hired the broadcaster that he previously hired in Cincinnati: Red Barber.

My mom already enjoyed baseball, but Red Barber made her a Dodger fan.  Once the Dodgers started broadcasting their games, my dad asked my mom to keep track of what happened during the Dodger game while he was at work.  It was Red Barber’s descriptions that kept her interest and made it easy.  She loved his laid-back, down home style and his calm voice.  She became a Red Barber fan for life.  And many baseball fans in the New York Metropolitan Area, especially Dodger fans, felt the same way.

Red Barber, Connie Desmond and Vince Scully (L to R)

Red Barber and Vin Scully first connected a little over ten years after Barber arrived in New York.  The native New Yorker met the transplanted Southerner in the fall of 1949.  Scully was a recent Fordham graduate, and he had done summer fill-in work in Washington, DC, on a CBS affiliate.  Once he returned to New York, one of his stops was CBS to deliver his resume and letters of reference.  Redhead briefly met redhead that day and something about that young man impressed Barber.  Ironically, their first work together involved football, not baseball.

In 1949, CBS Radio had a college football program, Football Roundup, featuring the top games each week on Saturday with broadcasters at each game providing a remote feed to give updates on the progress of their game.  Barber was in the CBS studio in NYC coordinating the program switching from game to game and giving the cue to the next announcer to give a quick update.  As Vin recalls, there were 4 games covered simultaneously on any given Saturday, so each announcer had to stick to the basics.

As Saturday was fast approaching one week in November, they suddenly found themselves an announcer short.  Try as they might, no other sportscaster was available on such short notice.  Barber remembered that “young fellow” who had stopped by recently.  And soon Vin was heading up to Boston to broadcast the Boston University-Maryland game from Fenway Park.

Football at Fenway

Fortune smiled on Vin just to get this opportunity.  It smiled on him again during the game.  By the second half, none of the other games were close.  The only interesting contest was the game at Fenway (which Maryland won, 14-13).  And pretty soon, Vin would say, “And back to you in New York, Red.”  And Barber would reply, “And we’re sending it right back to you, young fellow.”

Vin also had some bad luck that day.  Or so he thought.  It turned out that his alma mater, Fordham, was playing Boston College that day, also in Boston.  There was going to be a dance after the Fordham game that he wanted to attend, being single at the time.  He didn’t want to be encumbered with extra clothes at the dance, so he left his hat, coat and gloves in his hotel room.  Since he was working for CBS, he assumed he would be broadcasting from the broadcasting booth.

Instead, he found himself up on the roof of Fenway, with the sound engineer, a card table and a long length of cable.  The chilly winds quickly blew away his notes.  The temperature was in the low 40’s.  And at the end of the game, Vin thought he blew his big chance, that the cold, windy conditions adversely affected the quality of his broadcast.  But even though he expected a booth, he was still young and green enough that he didn’t complain.

On Monday, a representative of Boston University called Barber to apologize for the horrendous conditions under which the announcer had to work.  When he explained the details, both the quality of Vin’s work and the quality of his character rose in Barber’s mind.  Barber called Vin to tell him he would have a booth the following week at the Yale Bowl.  He was assigned to the Harvard-Yale game.

Ernie Harwell was the broadcaster originally assigned to the Boston University-Maryland game.  He was not the announcer who became ill.  He was reassigned to replace that announcer for what was considered to be a better game, the North Carolina-Notre Dame contest at Yankee Stadium.  But North Carolina’s star running back, Charlie Justice, was injured, and Notre Dame was en route to an undefeated season and #1 ranking in the country.  Notre Dame won easily, 42-6.  So Scully ended up with the best game instead of Harwell.

Harwell had a second role in this narrative.  In 1948, Barber was suffering from a bleeding ulcer.  Harwell was an up and coming, highly regarded announcer for his hometown Atlanta Crackers team in the Southern Association.  There was only time in major league history that a player was traded for a broadcaster.  Branch Rickey traded a minor league catcher, Cliff Dapper, to Atlanta to acquire the services of Harwell to fill the breach left by Barber’s infirmity.  Harwell stayed as part of the Dodgers broadcasting team in 1949, but he was chafing under Barber’s demanding nature as the top man in the booth.  He found a temporary home uptown.

Through 1948, the Yankees and Giants shared broadcasters and a radio network, but in 1949, they each went their own way to broadcast their team’s entire 154 game schedule.  Mel Allen went with the Yankees and Russ Hodges went with the Giants as the respective #1 announcer.  And the Giants gladly grabbed the dissatisfied Harwell to add to their broadcast booth in 1950.  This was a time of baseball sportscasting excellence in New York City.  All five broadcasters mentioned are in the Baseball Hall of Fame and have received numerous similar honors.

Barber had the lead role in choosing a successor to Harwell, to join him and Connie Desmond in the Dodgers broadcast booth.  He might have chosen Al Helfer, with whom he had worked in Cincinnati and Brooklyn before Al enlisted in the Navy at the start of WWII.  He was not tied to any particular baseball team at the time.  Or he might have chosen another experienced baseball announcer.  But he had a dream for quite a while of taking a promising but inexperienced announcer and molding him into a top flight broadcaster.  He decided that Scully filled the bill and Branch Rickey seconded his decision.  Never was the perspicacious Barber more correct.

Indeed Scully found Barber to be as stern a taskmaster as Harwell did in those early years.  But the easy-going Desmond was a counterbalancing force, quick to throw his arm around the chastised young broadcaster, console him and encourage him.  Where Barber was the strict father figure (indeed he thought of Vin as the son he never had), Desmond was the big brother who lifted his spirits and told him it would all work out.

Then fortune smiled on Vin again during his fourth season with the Dodgers.  In 1953, the Dodgers and Yankees repeated as league champions and met in the World Series.  The year before, NBC had the #1 announcer from each team split the play by play for every game.  That paired Mel Allen and Red Barber.  But they weren’t paid by NBC.  They were paid by the primary sponsor, Gillette.  They offered a tiny sum to the broadcasters, believing they should consider it an honor to be chosen.  Barber wanted more, but Gillette felt no reason to budge.  By 1953, Walter O’Malley had become principal owner of the Dodgers.  Even though Barber was brought into major league baseball in Cincinnati and Brooklyn by Larry MacPhail, Barber and Branch Rickey had developed a close friendship.  Barber felt a strong loyalty to Rickey and that stuck in O’Malley’s craw after he forced out Rickey as Dodgers President.

Barber informed O’Malley of the impasse with Gillette.  O’Malley, as a powerful owner of a very successful team in the number one media market, could have gone to bat for Barber and put pressure on Gillette and NBC.  Instead, he chose not to, telling Barber it was not his problem.  That led to two important vacancies.  Most immediate was who would be the Dodgers representative on the national telecasts.  The choice was between the more experienced Desmond and Scully who was fairly well-seasoned by now.  But Desmond also declined to work the Series for reasons not reported, but it might have been related to some obligations to broadcast college football.  That’s how Scully became the youngest person to broadcast a World Series game.

(Scully worked the World Series with the Yankees #1 broadcaster, Mel Allen. Here’s Mel doing the voice over on a vintage Gillette TV commercial of the era.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9KVfn2-EEU )

The second choice that had to be made was who would be the new number one man in the Dodger broadcast booth in 1954.  The logical choice was Desmond.  But the pressure of being number one drove him to the bottle even more.  Helfer was brought back in to the job he left after the 1941 season, but more and more Scully was emerging as the top man.  Finally during the 1955 season, O’Malley fired Desmond because of missed broadcasts.  Desmond pleaded for one more chance and was reinstated for the 1956 season, but the O’Malley’s patience was exhausted that year.  He never announced for another major league baseball team again.

A rare picture of Jerry Doggett without Vin Scully

The Dodgers brought in Jerry Doggett to finish out the 1956 season.  Even though Doggett was ten years older, Scully had seven full years of major league broadcasting experience.  Doggett had only three years doing one major league game a week on the Mutual network.  By that season, less than 30 years of age, Vin Scully was the number one Dodger announcer and would eventually be recognized by most observers as the number one baseball announcer anywhere.

Knowing a good thing when he had it, O’Malley resisted the pressure to leave Scully and Doggett behind when the team moved to Los Angeles in the 1958 season.  Soon the Los Angelenos forgot all about the idea of their local favorites doing the broadcasts.  Doggett, still another redhead, was well-liked and stayed behind the mike for Dodger games until the end of the 1987 season when he was 71 years old, just missing out on the Dodgers most recent World Championship season.  He passed away in 1997.  Chris Carter, creator of the X-Files, named characters after both Scully and Doggett on the show.

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. – Psalm 16:6

God bless,

Lois

And Now For Something Completely Different … – Part I

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Alice in Wonderland, Andrew Cuomo, androgynous, answer, blending in, blessing, bureucracy, Charles Dickens, Christian, confusion, consult, counseling, Counselor, diagnosis, doctor, Dr. Carolyn Wolf-Gould, Dr. Sherman Leis, family medicine, gender transition, general practitioner, government agencies, health insurance, herbal equivalents, Hurricane Sandy, Kathleen O'Brien, Lewis Carroll, Lord, Medicaid, mental health professional, Obamacare, Oneonta NY, patient navigator, Pennsylvania, personal, personal care physician, plastic surgeon, prayer, prescription hormones, professional courtesy, psychiatry, psychology, real-life experience, sessions, shark, surgery, Transgender 101, transgender health care, upstate New York, VCS Rockl;and, wait

The Journey Begins

Well, it’s different for me, anyway.  In no way do I consider myself a pioneer.  Even so, I’ve decided to chronicle the next step of my gender transition journey.

Charles Dickens

Where to begin?  Charles Dickens began “David Copperfield” with the sentence “I am born.”  No, I think that is too far back.  Perhaps the more appropriate Dickens quote would be (personalized), “Lois Simmons asked for more.”  (Or for less?)

Part of the necessary steps for me to start on prescription hormones and to live my life as Lois was counseling sessions to determine if transgender was a valid diagnosis in my situation.  By the third session, we worked together well: she would give me one or more assignments and I would come back the following session with my homework extensively done.  The single most-used phrase uttered by my counselor was “Hold on, let me catch up.”  We usually were pressing up against the end of the session and would squeeze in the scheduling of the next appointment at the very end.

But one time, somehow we ended up with about 15 minutes left and everything from my assignments had been covered.  So my counselor, Kathleen O’Brien, brought up the topic of surgeries.  We hadn’t discussed them up to that point.

I dismissed bottom surgery immediately, totally for financial reasons.  I didn’t have health insurance at the time.  Besides at the time, most health insurance policies weren’t covering transgender related health care of any kind.

As far as breast augmentation, I said that I would wait to see how well hormones worked.  But then I added, I might consider some minor facial feminization procedures.

Kathleen looked at me in astonishment.  “Why do you think you need that?” she replied.  As it turned out, she was spot on.  While I am no beauty contest winner, no one has read me for male, even when I first started appearing female in public and had been on prescription hormones for less than a month.

I also took mild herbal equivalents for about one year prior to getting prescription hormones.  In fact, my first day was the day of the October blizzard in the NYC metro area.  The last day was the day that Hurricane Sandy hit my area and knocked out my power for three days (and a lot longer for some).

Within four months of counseling, I had my transgender diagnosis confirmation.  (Your time may vary.)  Kathleen and I then started to work on finding a source of hormones for me.  Her preference was an endocrinologist in Albany.  But he had a six month waiting list for new patients.  And that would put me needing to go to Albany in mid-March with the possibility of winter weather and the certainty of tax season getting in the way.  Six months became eight.

A clinic in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan was the next choice.  Over the phone, I was told that there was a six week waiting list.  Later, I was told that the time frame was not definite and I should not have been given one.  The point was moot.  Hurricane Sandy hit their facility hard and pushed everything back.

Then I remembered that I had found a transgender knowledgeable doctor in Northern New Jersey: a different state but closer to me than the other two.  I received a referral letter from Kathleen, waiting for phone service to be restored to this doctor.  I faxed the letter there.  They claimed that they didn’t receive it.

I told the receptionist that I would drive it there.  She said they were closing in a few minutes, but I could do so the next day.  I showed up, referral in hand.  “When would you like an appointment?” I was asked.  “As soon as possible,” I replied.  “How about tomorrow?”

My wait time went from six months to six weeks to sixteen hours!  It was the first and last time that doctor saw me in male mode.  He was pleased and amazed by what he saw on my next visit.  A few visits later, he confided to me that occasionally one of his cisgender patients would ask him if he knew who was in his waiting room.  One of his transgender patients was there, sticking out like a sore thumb.  Then he added, “No one has ever mentioned you.”  Indeed, I would sometimes engage in light conversation with another patient, family member or pharmaceutical salesperson in the waiting room.

Dr. Carolyn Wolf-Gould, my personal doctor and a beautiful person, inside and out.

But then Obamacare came along.  Not only did my GP sell his practice because of all the additional record-keeping requirements, but my public insurance (Medicaid) would not port over the state line.  As I wondered about waiting lists and finding a new doctor, Kathleen told me about Dr. Carolyn Wolf-Gould in Oneonta. It has been my good fortune for my basic medical care that I have not needed to provide Transgender 101 training for a medical practitioner.  And that was certainly true of Dr. Carolyn.

Dr. Carolyn and her husband, while also providing family medical care, have built an upstate New York oasis of medical care for transgender patients par excellence.  Their practice continues to grow and their patients come from surrounding states as well as New York.  Words cannot describe how much of a blessing she has been to me.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/may/03/transgender-healthcare-doctor-oneonta-new-york-carolyn-wolf-gould

And one of those blessings came during a six month checkup.  She asked me if I knew that Governor Cuomo had issued an executive order that required insurance companies in New York to cover transgender health care, including gender reassignment surgery.  I said I did, but I thought it only covered private insurance. She replied that it covered public insurance as well.  Furthermore, she had done some investigation and found a surgeon in the Chicago area who was experienced and took Medicaid.  Since inexplicably no surgeons in New York were doing the surgery, let alone accepting Medicaid, I could port my insurance outside of the state.

So I started pointing toward Chicago.  And I had two hurdles: a letter from my counselor (an MSW) and a letter from a mental health professional with a “Dr” title in a related field (i.e. psychiatry or psychology).

Kathleen was ready to write the letter right then and there.  She knew how successful I had been in my real life experience, far beyond the one year minimum requirement.  Then she looked through her notes.  We had only talked about surgery for a few minutes.

And I was glad for a few sessions devoted to the topic.  In some ways, this was a tougher decision than presenting my true self full-time to the world.  This meant a major surgery, something that never should be taken lightly.  Furthermore, I had passed age 60 and never had a reason to stay overnight in a hospital since my mom brought me home after I was born.  In December 2014, I had a tiny cyst removed from my eyeball: in by 7 AM, out by noon.  They don’t even put you under for that surgery: just a local plus a nice floating feeling, but you can still respond to instructions from the surgeon to look in various directions.  Until 2017, this was the only surgery I ever had.

No, this was going to something completely different.  Was I tempting fate?  As a Christian, I reminded myself that this wasn’t the right question.  Instead, would the Lord be with me in this or against me doing it?  It was even possible that this wouldn’t be considered a sin in general, but it might not be His will for me.

After prayer and contemplation of scripture, I didn’t receive any dissent from the Lord.  I was reminded that when I was a pre-teen, I had prayed for a while to wake up with a girl’s body.  I didn’t get the results I prayed for (although my body remained quite androgynous).  But I never got a “no”, either.  At that age, I lacked the knowledge and sophistication to understand that “wait” is a possible answer from God.

Now I needed to search for that second mental health professional, one at the level of doctor, for that second letter.  I found many who took my insurance, but none in my county who had the slightest experience in transgender issues.  I was tipped off on a husband and wife practice in a neighboring county that fit both conditions.  He had an 18-month waiting list; she wasn’t taking any new patients at all.

Then a new door opened.  VCS in Rockland, a group I was very familiar with by this time, had started a mental health clinic that accepted Medicaid.  By January 2016, I had my second mental health professional.  By the end of tax season, I had the second letter.  And by this time, Dr. Carolyn informed me that she had found a surgeon closer to me.  She assured me that he had an excellent reputation, was known for being very caring, and that he accepted Medicaid.  And that was how I found out about Dr. Sherman Leis in Pennsylvania.  He was everything advertised … and more.

http://www.drshermanleis.com/

http://www.thetransgendercenter.com/

But that is skipping ahead a few steps.  There is always a bureaucracy to deal with.  And it rose up at every turn.

Early in my adult life I worked for HUD in New York City.  I left that job to run a housing assistance program for a local housing authority.  After four years in public housing I became a financial professional, starting as a stock broker and adding other specialties over the years.  This might be the heart and soul of capitalism, but I still dealt with a government agency (SEC) as well as bureaucracies with the NYSE and NASD.

Even so, that was a relative lull until I started preparing taxes professionally.  Now I was dealing with the IRS and various state tax agencies (usually New York and New Jersey, but also Pennsylvania and California to name a few other states: over the years, I have prepared tax returns for 28 different states, DC and Canada).

I thought I qualified for a PhD in bureaucracy.  Then I started dealing with health insurance bureaucracy gremlins.

The first step is for the “patient navigator” to request approval for a consult with the surgeon.  This was submitted at the end of May, shortly after I delivered all the necessary paperwork from my two mental health professionals and Dr. Carolyn added her required letter.  I was told that this process should take about six weeks.

In mid July, six weeks had come and gone.  The patient navigator admitted surprise.  She told me that around the same time, she had submitted a request for another patient with the same circumstances: same surgeon, same insurance carrier, same surgery, same state of residence.  The other patient’s request was approved promptly.

This would be the first of many times I would become a ping pong ball between various people acting for my benefit, each claiming someone else needs to solve the problem.  Finally in mid-September I put my foot down and demanded that these people talk to each other and to stop going through me, the least influential in the process.

(I have been on the other side of this dynamic, when I deal with tax agencies on behalf of clients.  I have far more clout than the clients do.  I illustrate this with the following joke.

A ship wrecks and three men end up in one of the life boats.  One is a priest, one is a soldier, and one is a lawyer.  After rowing for a while, they spot an island nearby.  But the current is against them reaching the island with normal effort.  Furthermore, there is a school of sharks between them and the island.  Swimming to the island seems out of the question.

Finally they decide that maybe one could get through to the island and hopefully get help on the island.  But who should be the one?  The priest argues he should go because the Lord would protect him during the swim.  The soldier counters that he is by far in the best shape and would have the best chance of getting through, either outswimming or fighting off the sharks.  Rather than enter the discussion, the lawyer simply takes off his shoes and jumps in the water.

To the soldier’s amazement, the sharks open a path for the lawyer to swim through and he makes it safely to the island.  The soldier asks the priest if he knows why that happened.  The priest replies, “Professional courtesy.”)

Finally the parties involved talked directly to each other.  And what did Dr. Carolyn’s office find out?  My insurance carrier wanted paperwork that pertained only to an in-state service request.  This service was being performed out of state.  Even so, it took another few days for the patient navigator to decide that the best way to resolve this impasse was to simply fax the request again.

Alice in Wonderland’s white rabbit

With the cover page please include a statement that this is an out of state request, I suggested.  She did.  On September 26, I had approval for a consult with Dr. Leis.  There was a minor problem that the approval was good for only 30 days and it took over 60 days to get a consult with Dr. Leis.  In a few days, the approval was extended and I had an appointment for a consult with Dr. Leis on November 30.  It was a consult that should have been held before Labor Day.  Little did I know my trip through health insurance Wonderland was just beginning.

O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces … – Daniel 9:7 (portion)

God bless,

Lois