Plea Deals: The Duplicitousness of the Government

     I was offered a plea deal by the prosecutor.  

     The plea deal involved paying the government a large sum of money in exchange for no prison time.  Plea deals are possible up until the moment the jury delivers a verdict, but the plea deal I was offered was made early in the game, around the time of my indictment.  

     If I pleaded guilty to the 210 charges in the indictment and agreed to not go to trial or otherwise take the government to task for wrecking my reputation and my life, and if I paid the government a lot of money (negotiable, perhaps), I could get on with my life.  

     Clearly, the prosecutor didn't regard me as a risk to society, someone who needed to be isolated from the world so that I couldn't "commit more crimes."  You wouldn't offer a plea deal to a serial murderer.

     But it's a crime to lie to an officer of the court.  Punishments for lying to FBI agents, the police, a prosecutor--any official in the CRIMINAL SYSTEM (people have stopped calling it the "criminal justice system," funny thing) are extreme.  Lying is termed an "obstruction of justice."

     The penalty for obstruction of justice in the federal system is 5 to 10 years in prison, plus a fine.  

     For interfering with a witness or tampering with evidence (18 U.S.C. § 1512)--5 years.  For obstructing proceedings before Congress or government agencies (18 U.S. C. § 1505)--5 years.  For influencing a juror or an officer of the court (18 U.S. C. § 1503)--10 years.     

     If I pleaded guilty, I would be lying to ("influencing") an officer of the court, because I wasn't guilty. The punishment for this is 10 years in prison plus a fine. "It's part of the game," people told me.  "Take a plea deal." 

     I cannot accept this.  People should not have to say they're guilty when they're not.  Legislators made a law that punishes lying.  Prosecutors force innocent people to lie to avoid the charade of a trial and almost certain prison time.  Innocent people who believe in the uprightness of the justice system and go to trial are punished more heavily when a jury convicts them--punished for not lying.

     I was not guilty of a crime or any wrongdoing.  I refused to say I was guilty to avoid prison.  I went to trial.  I got a prison sentence and a fine  

     I don't recommend this path, and I don't discourage it.  

     But today, I can live with myself.

Is Federal Prison Camp "Club Fed"?

      No.

     If there is a "Club Fed" out there, it wasn't where I went.  It wasn't where Martha Stewart went, either.  (She went to Alderson Federal Prison, in West Virginia.  I was at Coleman, near Leesburg, Florida.)

     The term, "Club Fed," may have been coined to foment anger in the public against prisoners who "deserve" to be punished and are, instead, the story goes, being treated to the high life.

     Prison is a ruthlessly punishing experience--even prison camp, the "best" of the prisons.  It's not "camp" at all.  It is an experience of constant surveillance, curtailment of most freedoms (except the freedom to think, as long as you keep your thoughts to yourself), temptation to rat on others if you think it might cut your time, and constant fear that you'll be caught in a fight or someone will do something that implicates you in a scheme (to get cell phones, perfume, drugs, cigarettes?  I don't know--) and gets you sent to "County," i.e., the county jail, where conditions are worse and you may be in solitary confinement, a.k.a. "the Shoe."  Prison is nothing but mind-numbing sameness.  The world closes in on you in prison.  Unbeknownst to you, your brain shuts down, a little bit more each day.  The walls within which you live are like a vise: they narrow your sensorium to such an extent that you forget most of the outside world.  Survival matters.  You are reduced to survivalism.  

     When I was released home after prison, I couldn't remember the names of my cats or dogs, I "forgot" how to turn on the oven, and I didn't recognize the contacts in my cellphone.  My sons thought I had developed dementia.

     It's true that in prison you get enough calories to sustain yourself.  There is air and water, and you have prison friends.  You can stay alive, strictly speaking. (The water, however, at Coleman, was contaminated by Legionella last winter, and many women became direly sick.)  I could walk outside on the track, get access to a piano most days for 30 minutes, and have books sent to me by my family.  If that was "Club Fed," then I suppose I was in Club Fed.

Prison Was the Best Year of My Life: Part 2

      I had a routine.  Every morning I woke at 5:30 AM.  Because inmates have so few belongings in prison, morning ablutions take very little time.  Most of the hundred inmates in my unit were sleeping, so I might have the entire row of sinks and showers and toilets to myself.  The bathroom smelled bad and the fixtures in the barracks-style bathroom were all malfunctioning:  clogged toilets, dripping faucets, cold showers, no showers.  Black mold everywhere, except when an outside inspection was due.  Then, inmates were recruited to paint over the mold.  After the inspection, the mold returned quickly.  It was not a wholesome place to breathe.

     I went to breakfast at "Main Line," a giant warehouse-type building on the grounds, open at 6 AM for an hour.   I brought teabags purchased through the commissary.  Breakfast was the only meal where milk was available--nonfat, almost transparent, in baggies, two per inmate. No scissors permitted--you opened them with your teeth.  I drank tea with skim milk, went to my job (it was a work camp), then began my 10-miles-a-day walking routine.  Three times around the track was a mile.  I brought a book and studied Spanish while walking.  I made a "hat" out of a baseball cap and pieces of cardboard retrieved from the trash, covered with reflective candy wrappers, to protect against the blistering sun.  I wore heavy green men's pants and a long-sleeved button-down men's shirt--prison-issued garb.  It might be 100 degrees out, but I kept to the routine.  It kept me sane and I was grateful to be in a prison where we were allowed outside for limited periods each day.  Since COVID, inmates are not permitted outside.  This must be causing a great deal of additional suffering.

     Inmates often joined me for a few laps, sometimes to be friendly, sometimes to ask questions about their health or their legal problems, and sometimes to trade Spanish-practice for English-practice.  A third of the inmates were native Spanish speakers, luckily for me.

     If any aspect of my routine was broken, lots of inmates came looking for me.  "Are you all right?  I didn't see you on the track!"  "Where were you at breakfast?"  "Is something wrong?"  Inmates care about one another.  There is solidarity of a sort I had never known before.  It made me feel loved and cared for.  We were equals, we had to look out for each other, and we did.  Of course, there were risks and hostility and people you might not trust--but not many.  I steered clear of them, as best I could. 

     When had so many people ever seen me, as me, rather than as a commodity or a person playing a fixed role?  When had so many people cared about me?  When had I ever had so many friends?

     How could this not have been the best year of my life? 

Prison Was the Best Year of My Life: Part 1

     This is not a general rule nor should it be taken to mean prison is good or fun or cushy.  It is not.  It is an awful experience and one I would not choose to repeat.  Not one of the 400-plus women where I was housed would have chimed in that their time in prison, too, was the best of their lives.

     But for me, prison afforded a chance to focus on myself for a change.  

     I didn't have full-time responsibility of my 30-year-old son with autism, a person who needs 24-hour care (his brother took over that year, with help from paid, trained caregivers).  

     I didn't have thousands of patients whose needs always came first because they were so pressing and that was my commitment.  I didn't have an office staff to take responsibility for.  Or stacks of paperwork to do past midnight.  

     I didn't have to deal with farm chores, downed tree limbs, broken irrigation pipes, the neighbor's wayward cows, rotted fence posts, alligators in the pond, sick chickens, ants in the bees' sugar, the bush hog needing welding, the mower's belt breaking, a wobbling ceiling fan, mice in the barn, leaves in the gutters, wax myrtle taking over the pasture, crows stealing pears, whiteflies and sooty mold on the citrus.  There were no texts, emails, phone calls, tax returns, or bills to pay.   

     I was liberated from all the things that make life life, the interesting, the annoying, the splendid, the awful, the unforeseen.  I was on an adventure.  It appealed to the part of me that had been an anthropologist before I took up medicine.  How could I know anything about this other culture--now a huge aspect of American life--if I weren't part of it?  Now, I was part of it.

 

Dr. C.: Still Here

     It has been eight years since my clinic, Colasante Clinic, PA, was raided, five since the feds indicted me, four since my trial and sentencing, three since I went to prison, and two since I was released from prison.

     If such a thing should happen to you, I'm here to say:  You can survive it.  

     I've had a lot of time to reflect on what happened to me.  Either I have a serious character disorder, or something went terribly wrong in our justice system, because I am still unable to "accept responsibility" or "feel remorse" for the events that transpired in my life and my family's lives, and which affected my patients' ability to rely on me and the survival of my clinic.  

     Instead, I have been moved to try to understand how the criminal system in this country operates and how it could go so wrong, so often, and in so many people's lives.  

     To that end, I am now in my second year of law school at Stetson College of Law.  

     One of the courses I'm taking this semester is "Criminal Law."  It's no more than a dip-of-the-toe in a river of lawmaking, and it's filled with stories of hardship and sordidness at the human level, and characterized by the valiant attempt by a governing body to uphold and revise methods for controlling a population's passions.  "The Law" is really scads of statutes and regulations--more than any group of people ever needs--and hundreds of years' worth of common-law decisions by courts here and in England.  It's fascinating material, but at this point in my training, it's like scrounging around under ten-foot weeds in my overgrown garden in a rainstorm and coming across a snail or two.  What happened to me in this country, and why?  I did not break the law, but a jury was made to think I did.  My friends in prison may have broken laws, but questions remain in their cases, too:  Should the laws they broke have been enacted in the first place?  Was their punishment in proportion to the harm--if any--they might have done?   What are we doing with so many Americans in prison, anyway?

     I have heard many stories, mainly from people in prison but also from those whose lives have forever been changed by a run-in with the law and a prison sentence--people who come forward with their stories when they know another person has been through a parallel ordeal.  I will tell you about some of them, if they give me permission.

     I'm going to relate, on this blog, what I experienced during my trial, at sentencing, while awaiting imprisonment, in prison, and since prison, as well as some of what I understand from law school.  I still garden, cook, study medicine, listen to politics, read books, raise bees, keep chickens, hang out with friends, and forage for wild food.  

     I hope what I relate might be helpful, or of interest, to someone, somewhere.  

A Certain Cachet

     I am not ashamed of my 162 felony convictions--because they are bogus.
     I am going to start wearing a button on my blouse that says, "I have 162 felony convictions--and I'm innocent.  Something is wrong with our justice system!"
     No one would go out of his way to choose this status, but I've detected a certain cachet to the label, "felon."  Believe it or not, there are some exceptional people in this group and we bond as easily as the members of other grief support groups.
     I have new friends:  fellow felons and felon-sympathizers.  When I say, I'm a felon! they emerge from their fringe positions in our hierarchy and introduce themselves.  We sit and chat--there's an immediate rapport.  I have always enjoyed the company of a wide range of people.
     Our justice system has a vested interest in enlarging this coterie of felons by enforcing mandatory minimum sentences (12 years for carrying marijuana across state lines, for instance) and by "catching" people like me.
     I went to a smoke shop on University Avenue right after my sentencing, bought a pack of cigarettes.  (I wish I could smoke them all--I need an escape!  Alas, you can't escape your fate.)
     The very friendly guy behind the counter had a shaved head, metal earring, muscle tee.
     "Have you ever been to jail--or prison?" I asked.  (Lots of people say yes.)
     "Why do you ask?" he answered.
     "I'm going to prison!" I told him.
     "Wow, really?" he raised his eyebrows and looked me up and down.  "You don't look like the type."  I detected something like respect in his tone of voice.
     "The type is expanding," I said.  "You have to start thinking of people like me as criminals."
      "That's for sure.  What'd you do?" he asked.  "Drunk driving?"
      "No.  I did my job.  Nothing wrong.  It's a white-collar thing."
      "Wow, cool," he said.  "The country's crazy."
      "Yeah."
      "I'm sorry," he said, speaking as one who knows.  "You're going to be in good company, anyway."
      "We'll see."
   

Tallow Plums

     Look what I found along the edge of the woods!  Lots of soft plum-like fruits dangling from low bushes and strewn over the grass--tallow plums (Ximenia americana).  They have big seeds, and slightly astringent flesh, and are also known as hog plums or yellow plums.    
     I had to consult my field guides to identify them.
     See the very best wild foods guru Green Deane's site "Eat the Weeds" and look up tallow plums.
     I cooked them in water, strained them through a sieve, and added honey from my beehives.  Makes a delicious juice.  High in the nutritive fatty acids:  linoleic, linolenic and arachidonic.
     There is so much wild food in Florida we could live, if we had to, without Publix.
   

Chanterelles

     This is the season to search for chanterelles.
     They're little orange  mushrooms poking out from under the leaves and basket grass under under big trees.
     It's pretty hard to mix them up with anything poisonous, but you should ask someone who knows about mushrooms to go into the field with you to identify them, just in case.
     See:  http://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/identify-chanterelle-mushrooms/ 
     False chanterelles taste bitter, whereas the real thing is delicately sweet.  High in protein, low in fat, high in fiber, with lots of trace minerals.  Fresh, free, forageable.
     I was picking up some new egg cartons from the barn when I spotted them under a Live Oak.
     Toss them over medium heat in a spot of butter and eat plain, on toast, or with eggs.
   

Math Problem

     Here's what the government's prosecutor claimed at my sentencing:  that I had been "overpaid" by Medicare a sum that was greater than the total amount I had ever been paid in the first place, from 2004 to when I closed my clinic in 2013.
     And that now I should be required to repay this "overpayment" in full--and then some.
     All the figures were up on the overhead projector screen.  It just didn't add up.
     Who did the math?
     Was anyone wincing?
     Every person there had a higher degree.
     Six weeks in the courtroom.
     You know, we all just wanted to go get some lunch.  
     And I suppose the calculator in the courthouse went berserk.  Thick walls.
   
     
   

Sledgehammer

     Who has 162 felony convictions?  Anyone?
     Come on.  When you hear that, you've got to be thinking:  something's wrong.
     (Somebody wanted to kill a cricket with 162 slugs of a sledgehammer.)
     (Actually, it was 210 slugs, but some of them missed the mark.)
     I love this country, but we get a lot wrong, we sure do.
     I can't explain it, but I feel lighter.
     Must be my cricket-slugged-spirit heading into outer space.

     

There Is Fiction in the Space Between

     We're always dichotomizing the world:  good guys, bad guys.
     At a time when everyone was eulogizing Nelson Mandela, someone on the other side of the aisle reported that he'd been a monster:  he had innocent people murdered, he ordered gasoline-filled tires to be put around their necks before setting them on fire.
     Everyone you know belongs to one of your myths, the ones you mostly keep to yourself, the ones in which you're a hero.      

     Tracy Chapman's song, "Telling Stories" conveys a pitiful truth, that we hardly ever connect with one another, and that all our statements are fictions of one sort or another,  not certainties.  There is a theory in psychology that all our thoughts arise spontaneously from the unconscious, and our egos decide whether or not to own them.  Our egos are so egoistic that they assimilate these thoughts and defend them as if they were created by them, not dredged from the vast underground river dubbed by Carl Jung as the collective unconscious.  I
     The stories we tell come from that murky, watery place too.  We tell them as though they're based in the material world, but our minds have been usurped by other forces
     "There is fiction in the space between you and me," I say to the prosecutors, the whistleblower, the jury, the judge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vHsPaUP4MM

At Last. Convicted and Sentenced: a Post-Mortem

     Where to begin?
     Finally, I have permission from my lawyers to write in my blog again.  Here's my question.
     What do you do when:
          a) You're falsely accused by a whistleblower, who is followed like dogs in heat by the government's agents;
          b) You're misrepresented in court by that same government, whose powers and finances are huge;
          c) You're convicted by a jury of your "peers," but the convictions and exonerations of 210 charges are not internally consistent, revealing general confusion about the case itself;
          d) The judge, who is very smart and likable and has done his best to sort out the information he's dispensed (hundreds of bankers' boxes of data; zip drives of  more data, too much to assimilate) also gets it wrong;
          e)  People who know nothing about you or the case, and have never even met you, make the decision that you're guilty and treat you on social media and anywhere else they find an audience like roadkill?
     What do I do?
     I file appeals of the verdict and the sentences.  More paperwork.
     And I take the long view.  Every day the sun comes up.  When it's wet the milkweed, sunflowers, citrus trees and pagoda plants are content, so I am, too.
     The unassailable fact of death for every one of us at the end of the line makes this path of mine nothing but a path.  I accept this path.  I even look forward to the next bend in the road.
     
          

Convicted

     I was convicted of 162 charges, acquitted of 35, on Monday, May 2, 2016 at 4:30 pm.
     The trial lasted 5 weeks.
     The jury of 16, gleaned from 200-plus contestants, was pared down to 12 for the decision.
     One juror posted snoring icons on her Facebook page during the trial, demonstrating her (and the others'?) level of interest.
     I admit, it was not "interesting."
     Some jurors closed their eyes and appeared to doze off for short stretches, which I'm told is common during long, complicated trials like mine.
     I wrote lots of post-it notes to my two lawyers (one on each side, like on TV) day after day, witness after witness, hoping it would assist them.  I don't think it did.
     There are lots of factors that go into a verdict, factors that have more to do with the jurors living inside the webworks of their own personal histories, splaying the thousand crisscrossed strands of past injustices at the hands of people who look and act like me, than the particulars of my case.
     "It's not about truth and justice," a prominent lawyer told me.  "This isn't Perry Mason."
     I haven't read the newspaper report, but if you want to, here is the link.
     http://www.gainesville.com/article/20160503/ARTICLES/160509923

12 (Angry?) Men (and Women)

     12 Angry Men is one of the best films of the 20th century.
     Every one of the actors went on to achieve stardom fame.
     What makes the film superb is its replication of the average American jury, character by character, based on personality types.
     I had the rare opportunity to catalogue, mostly by guessing, the personality types of a typical jury, because I watched my own jury over a five-week trial which ended on Monday May 2, 2016.
     Five weeks is a long time to study the faces of one's jurors, to hope they call upon their better selves, to hear their laughter, to see them grimace and twitch before re-fabricating their poker faces, and to watch them move in and out of consciousness, sometimes dozing under the blue-hued fluorescent lights of our stark, retro-Gainesville icebox of a federal courthouse.
     What matters most to people, the film emphasizes, is their own lives, what they do for work or fun.  Persuading them to abandon their personal passions long enough to come to a thoughtful verdict is a mighty task.
     It takes a Henry Fonda to make us think beyond the pablum we assimilate day after day via media hype, inherited opinions, and free-floating prejudices.
     Henry Fonda was Juror #8, a thoughtful architect who wasn't sure if the defendant was guilty or not, but simply wanted to talk about it.  His fellow jurors, if they were thinking about it at all, wanted to convict the "killer" (they were sure he was guilty) and get the heck out of there.
     Most juries don't have a Henry Fonda in their group.  It takes a ton of courage to stand up to eleven other people.  It takes guts to dig in one's heels, to force people around you to contemplate a thing, and to hang onto dignity and aplomb in the process.
     I think my jury was absent a Henry Fonda:  his character type is too rare.
     But what I found fascinating was how otherwise my own jurors correlated to the ones in this film version of Reginald Rose's television play.  Down to the last juror, I matched their countenances to the characters in 12 Angry Men.  Sidney Lumet's casting choices were right on.   Here were my jurors, one through twelve, right off the screen.
     #1 was the German watchmaker, played by George Voskovic, an immigrant who might have pushed for what's great about America's courts, that we're (supposedly) innocent until proven guilty, but went with the flow:  easier.
     #2 was the high school football coach, John Fiedler.   The moral compass, honest and credible, he fell prey to the jury's affection and coddled it, instead of serving, Aeneas-like, as the guide.
     #3 An an elderly man named McCardle, played by Joseph Sweeney.  He was open to persuasion, which is good when the persuasion has its basis in rectitude.
     #4 A garage owner, Ed Begley, who might as well have slept through the proceedings.
     #5 A businessman and the twisted father of an estranged son, played by Lee Cobb.  A force to contend with, he would have sent a kid (his son's age) to the electric chair to keep from feeling the pain of his own son's rejection.
     #6 A smiley, indifferent salesman, Jack Warden, with fewer regrets than a pickpocket.
     #7 The meek, balding, unpretentious bank clerk, John Fiedler, wide-eyed, sincere, but stomped on so many times in his adolescence he habitually traded his conciliation for a spot of kindness.
     #8 The stockbroker, E.G. Marshall, whose business acumen might have pointed out the special interests at work below the surface, and saved the kid.  Again, no fight in him, at least not for the other guy.
     #9 An advertising executive, indecisive, played by Robert Webber;  the imitation of authority, without the oomph.
    #10 A house painter, who might have taken the lead because he was tough, but didn't because he was tired, Edward Binns.
    #11 A man who rose up from the slums and called people out on their baser instincts, early to join the rebel (Fonda) team, but not the first.  Fighting Stockholm Syndrome ("I will not believe my oppressors!") is hard inner work.  Played by Jack Klugman.
    #12 This should have been Henry Fonda, right?  It should have been the self-employed guy who stood up to the soup-pot of humanity, stirring up suspicions, bringing to the surface those tiny wedges of onion and cayenne that are the other jurors' submerged intellects.  It's the person who could have reminded them of the most important instruction the judge gives:  to look for reasonable doubt.
     No such luck in my case.  I love this country anyway, because it keeps the idea of a perfect world alive, but the perfect juror comes out of Hollywood.  Thanks anyway, Henry, for telling us how it should have gone.

A Decent Society

     "What is a decent society?  A decent society is one whose institutions do not humiliate people.  A civilized society is one whose members do not humiliate one another."
                                                                      Avishai Margalit, A Decent Society

     As self-appointed exemplars of civilization at its best, we in the United States, though there are many nations worse than ours,  have a long way to go before we can declare with honest self-awareness that we are a decent and civilized people.

Another Witness for the Feds: Ms. Barker

     I saw a retail place for rent in Hawthorne, next to the post office.

     Four or five hundred square feet:  big enough for medical consultations, an EKG machine, minor surgery equipment, the usual apparatus for small-time doctoring.

     Maybe I ought to hang out a shingle again, I thought.

     There are no days when I'm not practicing medicine, off-label, so to speak.  Wherever I go. someone catches me by the sleeve and asks for advice, or a prescription.  People call me at home for "second opinions."  

     You don't stop being a doctor just because the feds indict you, it seems.  My license is intact, though this probably irks the bejeezus out of the prosecutor.  

     And the indictment is a joke, whatever happens, whatever story the prosecutor tells at my trial, fanning a spark she caught from the FBI agent's flint into a blaze.  The indictment simply has no basis in fact.  And if facts can be twisted like fencing wire to rein in a different story, a story completely opposite to the truth, a story that sends me to jail, then we don't live in a country of educated, honorable, truth-seeking, self-questioning people.

     "Do you think I ought to go back into medical practice?" I asked my sister, a nurse, who lives in my home state of Pennsylvania.  She's someone who relies on intuition and spiritual guidance to make decisions, and these count for as much as anything, in my book.  

     "You need a diversion from the mess they've put you in," she said.  "And you're so good at medicine.  You should be helping people."

     I miss patients and medicine, the magnificence of the human body healing itself, the riddle of symptoms, figuring out how they add up to diagnoses, turning those diagnoses into cure, kneading the cures into a prolongation of life.

     "Why don't you look for a space to set up practice?" my sister suggested.  "And pay attention to signs along the way, from the universe."  

     This is pretty much what I expected her to say.  (We ask people for the advice we want to get.  We prompt them to offer exactly that.)

     I called the phone number on the sign for the space next to the post office.  Myra Jill Barker (352) 481-2376.  There it is, in case the prosecutor wants it.

     "Ms. Barker, hello."

     "Who's this?"

     "I'm calling about the property owned by Mr. Lewis, next to the Hawthorne Post Office."

     "What do you want?" she demanded.

     "Are you a realtor?  Or are you selling that property privately?"

     "I'm a realtor," she said, and there was pride in her tone.

     "Is Mr. Lewis willing to rent the space?"

     "Yes, he is."

     "Can I look at it?"

     "I just showed it this morning to someone who wants to rent it."

     "All right, then.  Perhaps I could call you back in a week, in case that person doesn't go forward with the rental."

     "No," Ms. Barker said firmly.  "That's not going to happen."

     "What do you mean?" I asked.

     "Because that person is not someone I want to rent it to."

     "Okay," I said, mystified.  "Do you want to show it to me?"

     "I would, but first tell me what you plan to do with it."

     "I'm Dr. Colasante, and I'm thinking about opening a small office there.  A consulting clinic."

     Then the phone connection was lost.  Click-click, dial tone.

     Probably my AT&T connection, which drops calls every day.

     I called back.  

     "I'm sorry for the dropped call," I said.  "I wanted to--"

     Ms. Barker burst into my sentence.  "I've cleaned up all your dead bodies!"

     "What?"

     "I've cleaned up all your dead bodies, and I'm sick of it!"

     (Was she delusional?  I couldn't tell, not over the phone.)

     "I don't understand, Ms. Barker.  What do you mean?"

     "I used to work for the fire department.  I hauled away all your dead bodies!"

     "Would you like to talk about this?"  I asked.  "I'm confused by what you're saying."  Was she calling me a murderer?  

     "No I would not like to talk.  And I will not rent to you."

     "You're saying you won't rent to me?"

     "That's right, I won't."

     "But isn't your client, Mr. Lewis, the one who would make that decision, rather than you, the realtor?"

     "Good-bye!"

     With that, she hung up.  Which made me think the call hadn't been dropped a few minutes ago.  She'd hung up on me then, too, but answered my call-back to drive in a sword.  

     Experiences like this send a jolt through my nervous system.  What's going on?  

     Apparently there are people who think I am scum of the earth, and Ms. Barker is one of them.  How many more are there?  Dozens?  Hundreds?  If I open a clinic, will people throw rocks through the windows?  Will they trail me with Tazers or, worse, shotguns?  

     I know there isn't cause for this, so they must be piggybacking on the government's attack, a government that is piggybacking on Pat McCullough's lawyer's--Mr. Cohen's--attack, a lawyer who hopes to profit big-time from a whistleblower commission (he's already borrowed against multiple future expected whistleblower payoffs, to the tune of $30 million)--money that would go to Pat, whose attack served her purposes, and hers alone, at great cost to everyone, taxpayers included, except her.

     When someone powerful like the government makes an accusation, does everyone else follow suit, like the Pied Piper's retinue, blowing horns, shouting curses, waving swords, adding their own anger to the mess of inchoate anger rising up out of their unsatisfying lives, sullying the small possibility of any truth coming out?  

     What if the truth is complicated and time-consuming to unravel?  It's much easier to jump to firm, pat conclusions.  "She's a liar, she's a thief, she's a fraud!"  Those are simple, satisfying things to say about me, to take in and vomit out like a good, fat, five-course meal.   They take a load of guilt off the accusers, who feel pure and clean in their hearts, afterward.

     "Was Ms. Barker's refusal to talk to me a sign?" I asked my sister.

     "I don't know," she said.  "But it gives you another taste of what it's like to live in that part of Florida."

     "What do you mean?"

     "It's different down there.  People are different."

     "Right," I said.  But really, I was thinking about Mr. Ivey, from yesterday, and all the patients here in Florida whom, different or not, I had come to love.  People I wanted to help live a long time, because they had big hearts, and things to teach me.

     "Maybe you should come home," my sister said.  "People need you here, too.  Come back up north.  You're a bird who's lost your migratory path.  Maybe Florida isn't the place for you."

      

     

Ace Hardware, 10/28/15

     I was at Ace Hardware buying a few ounces of seeds for fall collards and mustard greens when the man behind me tapped my shoulder.  "You'ze Dr. Colasante?"
     "Yes."
     "You'ze the doctor who used to see people down there yonder?"  He pointed in the direction of Hawthorne Medical Center, now weed-strangled, vermin-infested, defunct.
     I noticed his custodian's button-down shirt with the name embroidered over his breast pocket:  "IVEY."
     "Yes, I'm Dr. C.," I answered.
     "I know you!" he smiled broadly.
     "Really?"  I asked.  "But I don't recognize you,  Mr. Ivey.  I'm sorry."
     I was trying to place him, but we'd had eight thousand patients back then,  a lot.
     "I did take care of some Iveys," I recalled, ticking off a few of names for him.
     "I wasn't never one of your patients," he explained, "but a lotta my kinfolk was."
     In truth, I'd seen enough Iveys, and Williamses, and Manns, and Rutledges, and Gordons to fill a telephone book.
     Each family practically had its own shelf of medical charts.  They were good, cheerful, hard-working, belly-laughing, church-going, soulful, thoroughly respectable people, who made my job a lot of fun.  I did what I could to get them well and keep them going, but clinic visits with them were never only about health.
     We talked about politics, family gatherings, kids, school, the upcoming church picnic, fishing, shrimping, God's will, the weather at the lake, and how to cook collards.  We talked about justice and injustice, race, prejudice, hate, love, the Bible, and forgiveness.
     I was an extension of the community--honored to be so!--and office visits were one more way of "communing."  
     "So that's why you don't look familiar," I said, relieved.  "I'm sure I would have remembered you."
     We paid for our purchases and went out to the street together.  I covered my brow with my seed bags to cut out the glare of the morning sun ricocheting off the hood of my Prius.
     "You was a good doctor!" he exclaimed.  "Everybody says so."
     "Maybe I ought to go back into practice," I mused.  "I've been thinking about it."
     "You ought to!" he practically shouted.
     "Who's your doctor?"  I wanted to know.
     "Tell you the truth," he said, shaking his head, "I don't got no doctor."
     "Don't you have insurance?"
     "I have insurance, but no doctor.  Don't know where to go.  There is no place."
     In fact, there are two separate medical facilities in Hawthorne, each no more than a few blocks from where we were standing.   I said so, tipping my head in both directions.
     "Naw," he said without elaborating.  "No place to go, not really."  
     So we had an office visit right there in the street.  I parried him with questions, made some guesses based on his physical appearance, found out what his blood pressure was, and wrote him a slip for lab work.  He seemed grateful.
     "Hey, 'fore you go," he whispered hoarsely, pulling my shirtsleeve.
     I leaned in to hear, feeling conspiratorial.
     "How you gonna cook them mustards?"
     And before I could answer he was telling me to put a little sugar in the greens after draining the pot liquor, along with salt and onions, and maybe some pork, if I liked it.  "Sugar's the secret to taking out some of that bitter."
     "Thanks for the tip!" I said.
      "Sure thing."
      I was getting in the car, starting up the engine.
      "We can meet, or talk on the phone, once your test results are in," I suggested.  I'd taken down his phone number.  "But really, Mr. Ivey, you need a doctor."
     "Yeah, I know, Doc! " he called out jocularly, walking away.  "And you know what?" he looked back. " I'm waitin' for you!"
   
   
    

Rudeness Is Not a Felony

     Some of my detractors have posted blog comments that amount to hip-hip-hoorays for convicting me.
     Naturally I wondered what that was about.
     If these blog readers--prior patients--claim I should be apprehended, pay a fine,  go to jail, then what for?
     I analyzed the impugning comments and tabulated the following accusations.

          1.  Dr. Colasante made us wait in the waiting room for an hour and a half before being seen.
          2.  Dr. Colasante's staff didn't give us our test results over the phone when we called.
          3.  Dr. Colasante did tests that we didn't think were necessary, and the proof is that the results turned out to be normal.
          4.  Dr. Colasante's staff was rude.
          5.  The reports we got from our insurance companies didn't make sense to us, therefore Dr. Colasante must have billed for services we didn't get.

     Do these complainants know the difference between being unhappy with an experience, and being the victim of a bona fide crime?
     If you're unhappy with how you've been treated at a place of business, it's for one of two reasons.  Either the business has a problem providing satisfactory service, or you have expectations that exceed the stated objectives of the business, or are impossible to meet.
     We all know people who are chronically unhappy with whatever comes their way.   I happen to like most of these crotchety types and enjoy trying to please them, though I usually fail.  They have a world view that places them at the bottom, empty-handed, disappointed by the universe, never valued enough.    Following a predictable formula they turn their unhappiness into blame.  But crime?
     Making a patient wait his or her turn in the waiting room while other same-day patients are being seen in order, is not a crime.
     Not giving patients results of sensitive, HIPAA-regulated tests over the phone is not a crime.
     Rudeness is not nice, but it's not a crime.
     Not understanding an insurance claim submitted by a doctor doesn't mean the doctor committed a crime.
     Not a crime, and certainly not a felony, and not two hundred ten felonies, each of which carries a maximum of ten years in jail.
     

Haply, I Think on Thee, Ultimate Justice

SONNET 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, 
With what I most enjoy contented least; 
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state, 
Like to the lark at break of day arising 
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.  

                                                     Shakespeare

Facts about Whistleblowing

     Most whistleblower cases take advantage of the False Claims Act, a piece of legislation that is used to accuse and indict doctors who accept Medicare and Medicaid patients.  Any business that bills the government for services is vulnerable to charges under the False Claims Act.  A "false claim" is when an individual knowingly bills the government for services that weren't provided.  In the medical field, the government expands this definition to included services that "weren't necessary," thereby allowing FBI agents and federal prosecutors to step into the physician's role, deciding sans patient, sans symptoms, whether a medical test or treatment was necessary or not.
     In my case, most of the 210 charges in the original indictment are based on the contention that I provided services (hearing tests, counseling about diet, weight loss, addiction) that "weren't necessary."  In some cases, the government claims there isn't enough documentation in the chart to support a claim that services were provided, especially counseling services.  
     Eighty percent of whistleblowers end up with nothing:  their accusations are baseless, the cases have no merit.  Of the whistleblowers who collect a reward for reporting physicians and other government service providers, the average payment is $150,000.  Attorneys take forty percent of whistleblower payments, and taxes take thirty percent or more (see:  Whistleblower Awards).
     If there is justice in our legal system, there will be no whistleblower payment related to my indictment and there will be no case won by the government, because there isn't a legitimate case against me.